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info@reason.org (Reason Foundation)http://www.pjdoland.com/chai/?v=0.1California Bill to Restrict E-Cigarettes Would Harm Public Healthhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/california-bill-to-restrict-e-cigar
Orange County Register <p>A California legislator just introduced a bill that would add electronic cigarettes to the state&rsquo;s Smoke-Free Workplace Law, thereby prohibiting vaping everywhere that smoking is prohibited, including offices, bars, restaurants, stores, schools, and hospitals.</p>
<p>&ldquo;No tobacco product should be exempt from California&rsquo;s smoke-free laws simply because it&rsquo;s sold in a modern or trendy disguise,&rdquo; declared Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.</p>
<p>Since e-cigarettes are not tobacco products, that explanation is puzzling. Furthermore, since e-cigarettes do not generate smoke, it is odd to ban vaping in the name of maintaining smoke-free workplaces.</p>
<p>The depth of Leno&rsquo;s confusion is further revealed in an interview with Reuters. &ldquo;Whether you get people hooked on e-cigarettes or regular cigarettes, it&rsquo;s nicotine addiction, and it kills,&rdquo; he told the news service. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to see hundreds of thousands of family members and friends die from e-cigarette use, just like we did from traditional tobacco use.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Leaving aside the question of exactly how dangerous secondhand smoke is (and the question of who should determine the smoking rules on private property), there is no evidence that the vapor from e-cigarettes poses a significant threat to bystanders. That much was apparent during the debates over vaping bans in cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where the main rationale was not protecting bystanders from toxins and carcinogens but protecting children from the bad example set by grownups who look like they&rsquo;re smoking. The sight of such simulations, it was said, would make smoking seem socially acceptable again.</p>
<p>That fear never seemed very plausible, especially since smoking continued to fall among teenagers even as more and more of them experimented with e-cigarettes. But the idea that e-cigarettes are deadly to people in the vicinity of vapers is even more fanciful.</p>
<p>While some of the problematic chemicals in tobacco smoke have been detected in e-cigarette vapor, the levels are much lower. A 2013 study reported in the journal Tobacco Control, for example, found that &ldquo;the levels of potentially toxic compounds in e-cigarette vapor are 9,450-fold lower than those in the smoke from conventional cigarettes, and in many cases comparable with the trace amounts present in pharmaceutical preparations [of nicotine].&rdquo;</p>
<p>Tellingly, the strongest evidence Leno can cite in favor of a ban is a recent study that &ldquo;found high levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, in e-cigarette vapor.&rdquo; But that finding came from a test in which a vaporizer was overheated to a point where no human would be interested in using it because of the terrible taste caused by high temperatures (known as the &ldquo;dry puff phenomenon&rdquo;). When operated at a realistic temperature, the vaporizer emitted no formaldehyde.</p>
<p>Kimberly Amazeen, vice president for public policy and advocacy at the California chapter of the American Lung Association, implicitly conceded the lack of evidence to support a vaping ban, saying, &ldquo;There is currently no scientific evidence establishing the safety of e-cigarettes.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Shouldn&rsquo;t the burden of proof be on the prohibitionists?</p>
<p>Contrary to what Leno seems to think, it&rsquo;s not the nicotine in cigarettes that kills people; it is all of the toxins and carcinogens generated by tobacco combustion. Since vaping does not involve tobacco or combustion, it is much less dangerous than smoking.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We need more viable alternatives in the fight against tobacco,&rdquo; former U.S. surgeon general Richard Carmona wrote last year. &ldquo;One promising alternative is the electronic cigarette, which is not actually a cigarette. It contains no tobacco, but rather delivers nicotine without the toxic, carcinogenic and other disease-causing products of tobacco combustion. Published research suggests that e-cigarettes can play a significant role in tobacco harm-reduction strategies.&rdquo;</p>
<p>That means the policy Leno is pushing will actually undermine public health to the extent that it discourages smokers from switching to vaping.</p>
<p><em>Jacob Sullum is senior editor at Reason magazine. This article originally appeared in the <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cigarettes-649735-tobacco-smoking.html">Orange County Register</a>.</em></p>1014147@http://www.reason.orgFri, 06 Feb 2015 10:28:00 ESTjsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum)Smoking, Plain Packaging and Public Healthhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/smoking-plain-packaging-and-public
<p>Smoking is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the world. In most wealthy countries, smoking has been declining for decades.</p>
<p>Public health experts and anti-smoking groups have for many years advocated for restrictions on the marketing of tobacco products in general and cigarettes in particular. In response, governments in wealthy countries have banned most or all advertising, and many have banned sponsorship and other explicit forms of marketing of cigarettes.</p>
<p>Many public health advocates say these restrictions do not go far enough and have called for the elimination of brand identifiers such as logos and colors on cigarette packs. Some experimental evidence has suggested that such plain packs would encourage smokers to perceive cigarettes less favorably, which might lead them to quit.</p>
<p>However, this optimism was tempered by evidence that even restrictions on advertising have had at best a small influence on the decline in smoking (most of the decline can be traced to a better understanding of the risks of smoking, in large part a result of public information campaigns, and taxes on cigarettes).</p>
<p>In 2011, Australia&rsquo;s government introduced legislation mandating that cigarettes be sold in &ldquo;plain packages&rdquo; (i.e., without brand logos and colors). The legislation came into effect in late 2012. (Australia had already banned practically all tobacco advertising and other forms of marketing. In 2006, it had introduced a requirement that cigarette packs display graphic health warnings on a substantial proportion of their surface area.)</p>
<p>Some studies (such as a survey carried out when plain packaging was being introduced, an analysis of calls to a smoking cessation hotline, and a survey of outdoor smoking habits) suggest that plain packaging has indeed made cigarettes less desirable to smokers and has increased thoughts of quitting.</p>
<p>However, an online survey of smokers carried out in two phases, the first a month before and the second six to eight weeks after the introduction of the plain packaging rules, suggests that the impact of the rules on quitting tendencies is probably small. Moreover, many smokers engaged in defensive behaviors such as covering up health warnings, and did not report changing brands or a significant increased tendency to quit. This finding was corroborated by another survey that found that in the year to July 2013 the proportion of smokers in Australia had not declined since the introduction of plain packaging.</p>
<p>A study looking at discarded packs and other data suggests that consumption of cigarettes in the year to July 2013 remained at the same level as in 2012, but found that the proportion of illicit cigarettes had increased substantially. This is corroborated by the most recent Annual Report of Australia&rsquo;s Customs and Border Protection Service, which indicates that the number of illicit cigarettes entering Australia has indeed risen dramatically in the past three years.</p>
<p>The discarded pack study concluded that contraband&mdash;much of which is in the form of finished cigarettes that are not legally sold anywhere in the world, known as &ldquo;illicit whites&rdquo;&mdash;now accounts for more than half of illegal sales and about 7.5% of all sales. Part of the blame for the increased availability of illicit whites lies with a 25% increase in excise tax on tobacco introduced in 2010. But, since most of the increase in their market share occurred in the past 18 months, part of the blame almost certainly rests with the plain packaging rules.</p>
<p>The wide availability of illicit whites in Australia means it is highly likely that adolescents now have greater access to cigarettes than previously&mdash;and at lower prices. Moreover, these &ldquo;illicit whites&rdquo; have no health warnings. Given the contribution of plain packaging in Australia to the rise of the illicit white, it seems reasonable to conclude that it has been counterproductive.</p>
<p>While motivated by the best of intentions, plain packaging&rsquo;s effects appear to have been less than desirable. Other countries contemplating the introduction of plain packaging would be well advised to postpone any decision until its effects in Australia are better understood.</p>1013859@http://www.reason.orgFri, 30 May 2014 15:34:00 EDTjulian.morris@reason.org (Julian Morris)Proposed WA & NJ E-Cigarette Taxes Would Perpetuate Smokinghttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/proposed-wa-nj-e-cigarette-taxes-wo
<p>In a <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/e-cigarette-tax-washington">new Reason.org column</a>, I write that the proposed e-cigarette taxes currently being discussed in final budget negotiations Washington State&mdash;as well as those proposed by Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey&mdash;are counterproductive to public health, unjust and unfair in their application, and economically harmful to a rapidly growing market of entrepreneurs, manufacturers and retailers specializing in e-cigarette products. Here's an excerpt:</p>
<blockquote>Washington State and New Jersey are currently considering budget proposals that would impose additional taxes on e-cigarettes. These taxes would discourage smokers from switching, thereby ensuring that many more people continue to smoke cigarettes, which are far more harmful.<br /><br />Washington State&rsquo;s proposal, coming down to the wire amid the flurry of budget negotiations today and tomorrow in advance of the end of the legislative session on Thursday, would impose steep taxes in proportion to the nicotine level of vapor liquid. The premise, presumably, is that nicotine itself is harmful. But there is little evidence to support this premise. Meanwhile, heavy smokers require the high nicotine levels when they switch, so a tax that is proportional to nicotine levels would most discourage the very people who most need to switch.<br /><br />The real reason for these taxes is to raise revenue. But both Washington State and New Jersey already impose sales taxes on e-cigarettes, e-liquids (the liquid &ldquo;vaped&rdquo; in e-cigarettes), batteries and other related products, so additional taxes seem disproportionate and punitive.</blockquote>
<p>Read the <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/e-cigarette-tax-washington">whole thing here</a>.</p>
<p>On a related note, <a href="http://www.metronieuws.nl/plus/doctors-recommend-e-cigarettes/SrZmkn!uLodYTPWd7k52/">this interesting <em>Metro</em> article</a> from last November caught my eye tonight. Key excerpt (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote>E-cigarettes are almost completely free of health risks, and could save millions of lives, agreed health experts at a London summit to discuss the effects of the device. [...]<br /><br />&ldquo;<strong>We can recommend that smokers who cannot quit should switch to e-cigarettes</strong>,&rdquo; <strong>said leading researcher Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos of the University Hospital Gathuisberg, Belgium. The risks were less than 1/1000th of smoking tobacco, he told Metro.</strong><br /><br /><strong>Dr. Farsalinos added that the devices were the most effective tools to quit smoking</strong>. &ldquo;The best alternative before was around 20% [...] In my research up to 80% of participants using e-cigarettes have quit.&rdquo; Medical journal The Lancet also found that e-cigarettes were more effective than Nicorette gum and patches.<br /></blockquote>
<p>Nonetheless,&nbsp;greedy and myopic politicians still want to ban and tax these products.&nbsp;</p>1013764@http://www.reason.orgWed, 12 Mar 2014 00:20:00 EDTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)Washington State and New Jersey Legislatures Consider Massive Taxes on E-Cigarettes That Would Perpetuate Smokinghttp://www.reason.org/news/show/e-cigarette-tax-washington
<p><a href="http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Dozens-protest-poised-e-cigarette-tax-249198841.html">Washington State</a> and <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/lifestyle/Chris-Christie-plans-new-tax-rate-for-e-cigarettes-with-2015-budget.html">New Jersey</a> are currently considering budget proposals that would impose additional taxes on e-cigarettes. These taxes would discourage smokers from switching, thereby ensuring that many more people continue to smoke cigarettes, which are far more harmful.</p>
<p>Washington State&rsquo;s proposal, coming down to the wire amid the flurry of budget negotiations today and tomorrow in advance of the end of the legislative session on Thursday, would impose steep taxes in proportion to the nicotine level of vapor liquid. The premise, presumably, is that nicotine itself is harmful. But there is little evidence to support this premise. Meanwhile, heavy smokers require the high nicotine levels when they switch, so a tax that is proportional to nicotine levels would most discourage the very people who most need to switch.</p>
<p>The real reason for these taxes is to raise revenue. But both Washington State and New Jersey already impose sales taxes on e-cigarettes, e-liquids (the liquid &ldquo;vaped&rdquo; in e-cigarettes), batteries and other related products, so additional taxes seem disproportionate and punitive.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Erik Smith at <em>Washington State Wire</em> <a href="http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/as-vapers-organize-legislature-scrambles-to-impose-new-e-cig-tax-new-compromise-proposal-even-higher-than-the-original/">offered an excellent overview of the situation on the ground</a> in Washington that&rsquo;s well worth a read, as it is chock full of observations that highlight why the rush to tax e-cigarettes may satisfy the political appetite for ever more tax money to spend, but is ultimately:</p>
<ul>
<li>counterproductive to public health;</li>
<li>unjust and unfair in its application; and</li>
<li>economically harmful to a rapidly growing market of entrepreneurs, manufacturers and retailers specializing in e-cigarette products.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Public Health</strong></p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jphp/journal/v32/n1/full/jphp201041a.html">recent authoritative review</a> of 16 scientific studies of the impact of e-cigarettes in the <em>Journal of Public Health Policy</em> concluded that, &ldquo;a preponderance of the available evidence shows [e-cigarettes] to be much safer than tobacco cigarettes and comparable in toxicity to conventional nicotine replacement products.&rdquo; The article goes on to note that, &ldquo;electronic cigarettes is not an <em>alternative</em> to smoking cessation, but rather <em>a form of smoking cessation</em> akin to long-term use of [nicotine replacement therapy].&rdquo; (emphasis mine) And there is <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265801.php">some evidence</a> that e-cigarettes are at least as&mdash;if not more&mdash;effective than nicotine patches in terms of smoking cessation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, former U.S. Surgeon General and anti-smoking advocate Richard Carmona <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7kLclUGbuA6bXNadjI0SjhXRG8/edit">recently warned</a> the New York City Council that its attempt to extend the city smoking ban to e-cigarettes would &ldquo;constitute a giant step backward in the effort to defeat tobacco smoking&rdquo; and &ldquo;send the unintended message to smokers that electronic cigarettes are as dangerous as [traditional cigarettes], with the result that many will simply continue to smoke their current toxic products.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Similarly, the proposed tax on e-cigarettes would make them more expensive, undermining the incentives of smokers to quit. As such, it would discourage smokers from switching to e-cigarettes, which are far less harmful. In other words, it would harm the public&rsquo;s health. Policymakers should be encouraging smokers to transition to safer products, such as e-cigarettes, not punish them for doing so by picking their pockets.</p>
<p><strong>Unjust and Unfair</strong></p>
<p>Currently, e-cigarettes are considerably less expensive than cigarettes, due to the very high taxes on cigarettes. Washington State proposes to tax nicotine at a rate of 8 cents per milligram, which could have the effect of doubling or tripling the cost of e-cigarette liquids, depending on the level of nicotine. As a result, the price of e-cigarettes would for many people be the same as cigarettes, as Erik Smith <a href="http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/as-vapers-organize-legislature-scrambles-to-impose-new-e-cig-tax-new-compromise-proposal-even-higher-than-the-original/">noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>The big cost advantage that has encouraged thousands of ex-smokers to invest in costly &ldquo;vaping&rdquo; apparatus would be no more. There goes one of the biggest incentives to quit.</blockquote>
<p>However, other nicotine products such as patches and gums&mdash;which contain the same active chemical (nicotine) as e-cigarettes&mdash;would be spared the tax. Why? Because they have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as &ldquo;smoking cessation products&rdquo; (the FDA is still in the process of evaluating the regulatory treatment of e-cigarettes).</p>
<p>So what this means in practical terms is that Washington policymakers are proposing to selectively target one subset of non-tobacco nicotine users for tax hikes, <em>simply because of the delivery method of said nicotine</em>. Stick a patch on your arm to stop smoking, no problem. Inhale the nicotine in non-carcinogenic vapor that kind of looks like smoking&hellip;well then, you&rsquo;d better pay up.</p>
<p>This differential application of taxation is bad tax policy, in addition to being a woefully misguided &ldquo;sin tax&rdquo; policy, as the Tax Foundation&rsquo;s Lyman Stone <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/washington-state-proposes-tax-e-cigarettes">recently pointed out</a>.&nbsp;Overall, the proposed e-cigarette taxes appear to be an opportunistic cash grab, a cynical attempt to recapture tobacco tax revenues lost as smokers switch to safer alternatives like e-cigarettes. But this makes no sense, as Stone <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/washington-state-proposes-tax-e-cigarettes">suggests</a>:</p>
<blockquote>The argument for tobacco [taxes] is that the smoking population imposes costs on the rest of society in the form of shared medical costs of entitlement programs, which are funded by taxpayers, and also in the form of second-hand smoke, which is a cost borne by anyone who walks into a smokey bar. [&hellip;] Whatever the validity of those arguments, however, they have absolutely no application to e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes don&rsquo;t cause damaging second-hand smoke and don&rsquo;t include the harmful tar and chemicals that cause lung cancer. Insofar as they substitute for more damaging products, they may actually have positive externalities. Taxing e-cigarettes may make the people of Washington less healthy rather than more. If the relative price of e-cigarettes rises, fewer people will switch away from traditional cigarettes, which means more second-hand smoke and more lung cancer.</blockquote>
<p>In other words, if the proposed e-cigarette taxes are meant to recapture tobacco taxes that would have eventually gone to public health spending to help cover the costs of the harmful impacts of smoking, then it would be illogical to impose a special tax on e-cigarette products because there is no health impact. Therefore, government would no longer need that revenue that is lost.</p>
<p><strong>Business Effects</strong></p>
<p>The e-cigarette market is gaining steam rapidly, with year-over-year sales doubling in 2013. One Wells Fargo market analyst <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/talking-numbers/billion-dollar-industry-didn-t-know-existed-094838014.html">projects e-cigarette sales to increase</a> an average 38.1% annually in the coming years, rising from $1.5 billion today to over $45 billion in a decade.</p>
<p>What&rsquo;s not seen in those numbers is a tremendous amount of other economic activity. For example, there&rsquo;s the emergence of &ldquo;vapor stores&rdquo; where users can sample vapor liquids, purchase batteries for e-cigarette devices, and an array of accessory items (<a href="http://vaporsearchusa.com/wa.htm">here&rsquo;s a representative list</a> of tax-paying businesses in Washington that did not exist a decade ago). These stores are already generating revenue for the state and local governments through sales taxes, business taxes, development permits and the like that would be squelched by pricing out a significant swath of their customer base through the imposition of punitive e-cigarette taxes. Many of these stores could face closure as a result, effectively nullifying the hard work of pioneering entrepreneurs in a vibrant, emerging market. Moreover, as Smith <a href="http://washingtonstatewire.com/blog/as-vapers-organize-legislature-scrambles-to-impose-new-e-cig-tax-new-compromise-proposal-even-higher-than-the-original/">noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>Should lawmakers impose a tax so punitive that it would wipe out the business just as it is taking hold? A business that seems to be accomplishing what generations of government anti-smoking campaigns have not? These are the kinds of questions that shouldn&rsquo;t be decided in a rush, says [Washington State] Rep. Dick Muri, R-Steilacoom, one of the Legislature&rsquo;s biggest vape-biz boosters. &ldquo;This is more than a nice little tax,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;This is a humungous tax. The power to tax is the power to destroy.</blockquote>
<p>The prospect of destructive taxes has caught the attention of the Washington State vapor community. Over at Jonathan Turley&rsquo;s blog, Darren Smith <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2014/03/01/taxable-vapor-washington-legislature-considers-taxing-e-cigarettes-like-tobacco-products/">recently wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>According to KING5 News which reported on testimony before the legislature, many e-cigarette customers and retailers were worried their interests might be snuffed out by the legislature.<br /><br />&ldquo;I pay my taxes very happily, but I feel this bill to be asinine,&rdquo; said Tammy Brookins, manager at Olympia&rsquo;s Volcano Vapor Cafe.<br /><br />She fears that essentially doubling the cost of her businesses products could put Volcano Vapor out of business. She also says it could scare cigarette smokers from converting to what she believes is a healthier alternative.</blockquote>
<p>Hours of such testimony is <a href="http://tvw.org/index.php?option=com_tvwliveplayer&amp;eventID=2014020204">available here</a>. And the destructive impacts of e-cigarette taxation would not just hit the vapor store market, but would extend to convenience stores as well, as <a href="http://www.atr.org/proposal-tax-e-cigarettes-percent-hurt-a8162">recently pointed out</a> by Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform.</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
<p>It remains to be seen what will happen with the e-cigarette tax proposals in Washington State and New Jersey. But the rush to impose them is disheartening for those seeking to improve public health and reduce tobacco-related harms. In their zeal to slap heavy taxes on something that looks like smoking but isn't&mdash;and is far less harmful&mdash;they would instead make it more likely that people would never switch in the first place.</p>
<p><em>Leonard Gilroy is director of government reform at Reason Foundation. Follow him on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/lengilroy">&#64;lengilroy</a></em></p>1013763@http://www.reason.orgTue, 11 Mar 2014 23:03:00 EDTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)New European Union Rules Will Hold Back Tobacco Harm Reductionhttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/new-european-union-rules-will-hold
<p>On Wednesday, February 26, the European Parliament <a href="http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2014/february/parliament-adopts-new-eu-tobacco-rules/79824.aspx">voted</a> to approve a new Tobacco Products Directive. The text adopted by the Parliament is expected to be rubberstamped by the Council of the European Union when it meets on March 14. Once it enters into force, EU member states will have two years to bring national laws into compliance with the terms of the directive.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2009_2014/documents/envi/dv/p7_ama(2013)0276(000-000)_/p7_ama(2013)0276(000-000)_en.pdf">new directive</a> contains all the illiberal strictures we have come to expect from such legislation: health warnings must cover 65% of the front and back of each cigarette pack and must be printed in black Helvetica bold type on a white background; cigarette packs much be cuboid in shape and contain no fewer than 20 cigarettes; all characterizing flavors&mdash;including menthol&mdash;must be banned.</p>
<p>But worse than these measures, which relate to traditional cigarettes, are the directive&rsquo;s new rules on electronic cigarettes, which deliver vaporized nicotine without tobacco or smoke. A growing body of research <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/los-angeles-ecigarette-ban">indicates</a> that these &ldquo;e-cigarettes&rdquo; are safer for users than traditional cigarettes, pose no health risk to non-users, and help habitual smokers to give up dangerous, combustible tobacco. Some analysts have <a href="http://www.nacsonline.com/News/Daily/Pages/ND0917134.aspx#.Uw-QcvRdUeY">predicted</a> that e-cigarette sales will exceed sales of tobacco cigarettes by 2021.</p>
<p>But rather than welcome e-cigarettes as a route to harm reduction, the new Tobacco Products Directive seeks to undermine this fast-growing market. First, the directive introduces a new strength limit for nicotine-containing liquid of 20mg/ml. As Clive Bates <a href="http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2022">notes</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>&hellip; 25-30% of users use liquids stronger than this, and there is no health or internal market basis for preventing the trade in these products. The stronger liquids are important to heavier smokers and to people as they make their first switch into e-cigarettes. The result of this limit will be less switching and more relapse to smoking. The result of that: more disease and premature death.</em></p>
<p>Second, the directive prohibits print, radio and audiovisual communications &ldquo;with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and refill containers.&rdquo; In other words, e-cigarette manufacturers are not allowed to tell consumers about their product. For an emerging technology seeking to disrupt a long-established industry, this is disastrous. The prohibition of advertising makes it hard for e-cigarette producers to dislodge market incumbents (i.e., traditional tobacco brands) and blunts their market incentive to come up with newer, better e-cigarettes. Why bother, when companies can&rsquo;t promote new products to consumers?</p>
<p>Third, the directive seeks to tie the e-cigarette industry in so much bureaucratic red tape that it is all but guaranteed to reduce competition and retard innovation. Smaller, independent e-cigarette brands will be particularly hard hit by requirements that they must submit to the &ldquo;competent authorities&rdquo; detailed notification of all new products six months before they are placed on the market. The same goes for demands that manufacturers and importers make comprehensive annual submissions on &ldquo;sales volumes,&rdquo; &ldquo;the preferences of various consumer groups, including young people, non-smokers and the main types of current users,&rdquo; and &ldquo;the mode of sale of the products.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The only way around these regulations, according to the directive, is for e-cigarettes to be recognized by national governments as &ldquo;medicinal&rdquo; or &ldquo;medical devices.&rdquo; But such categorization comes with its own heavy regulatory burden. To put it bluntly: <em>heads you win, tails I lose</em>. And e-cigarette producers aren&rsquo;t the only losers here. Ultimately, it is to Europe&rsquo;s smokers, whose lives could be longer and healthier if they switched to vapor, that the European Parliament has done the greatest disservice.</p>1013752@http://www.reason.orgThu, 27 Feb 2014 16:22:00 ESTinfo@reason.org (Tom Clougherty)Proposed L.A. E-Cigarette Ban Would Perpetuate Smoking, Not Discourage Ithttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/la-e-cigarette-ban
<p>From my <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/los-angeles-ecigarette-ban">new commentary</a> on L.A.'s proposed e-cigarette ban:</p>
<blockquote>On Monday, a Los Angeles City Council committee is set to consider an ordinance that would ban the use of electronic cigarettes anywhere that traditional cigarettes are prohibited under the city&rsquo;s smoke-free air laws. The City Council already unanimously passed a law subjecting e-cigarette sales to the same regulations and restrictions as tobacco products &mdash; even though e-cigarettes don&rsquo;t contain any tobacco.<br /><br />Not only does latest move to ban e-cigarettes run counter to public opinion, it would also set back public health by implicitly discouraging smokers from seeking safer alternatives.<br /><br />A national Reason-Rupe poll recently found that 62 percent of Americans e-cigarettes should be allowed in public places, while just 34 percent thought they should be banned in public places. The public sees through the types of unjustified fears espoused in the proposed L.A. ordinance, namely that e-cigarette vapor could harm users and bystanders in a manner similar to secondhand cigarette smoke and that the use of e-cigarettes might &ldquo;re-normalize&rdquo; tobacco use.</blockquote>
<p>Read the <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/los-angeles-ecigarette-ban">full article here</a>.</p>1013740@http://www.reason.orgFri, 21 Feb 2014 13:57:00 ESTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)Proposed L.A. E-Cigarette Ban Would Perpetuate Smoking, Not Discourage Ithttp://www.reason.org/news/show/los-angeles-ecigarette-ban
<p>On Monday, a Los Angeles City Council committee is set to consider an <a href="http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2013/13-1204-S1_RPT_ATTY_01-08-2014.pdf">ordinance</a> that would ban the use of electronic cigarettes anywhere that traditional cigarettes are prohibited under the city&rsquo;s smoke-free air laws. The City Council already unanimously passed a law subjecting e-cigarette sales to the same regulations and restrictions as tobacco products &mdash; even though e-cigarettes don&rsquo;t contain any tobacco.</p>
<p>Not only does latest move to ban e-cigarettes run counter to public opinion, it would also set back public health by implicitly discouraging smokers from seeking safer alternatives.</p>
<p>A national Reason-Rupe poll recently found that 62 percent of Americans e-cigarettes should be allowed in public places, while just 34 percent thought they should be banned in public places. The public sees through the types of unjustified fears espoused in the proposed L.A. ordinance, namely that e-cigarette vapor could harm users and bystanders in a manner similar to secondhand cigarette smoke and that the use of e-cigarettes might &ldquo;re-normalize&rdquo; tobacco use.</p>
<p>Concerns that e-cigarettes have similar effects on bystanders as secondhand smoke&mdash;something the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health suggests as a rationale for looping e-cigarettes into existing local smoking bans&mdash;are questionable. Because e-cigarette &ldquo;vaping&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t involve combustion, users avoid the thousands of chemicals&mdash;some carcinogenic&mdash;found in cigarette smoke.</p>
<p>A recent study by researchers at Drexel University&rsquo;s School of Public Health reviewed over 9,000 observations of e-cigarette use and found no evidence that &ldquo;vaping&rdquo; exposes bystanders to harmful levels of contaminants. Similarly, a 2012 peer-reviewed study by Clarkson University&rsquo;s Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science found no risk to public health from environmental e-cigarette vapor.</p>
<p>The growing body of research suggesting that e-cigarettes are safer for users and a viable pathway to help people quit smoking has an increasing number of academics, public health professionals and anti-smoking advocates calling for policymakers to reject knee-jerk bans on e-cigarettes.</p>
<p>For instance, former U.S. Surgeon General and anti-smoking advocate Richard Carmona recently warned the New York City Council that their attempt to extend the city smoking ban to e-cigarettes would &ldquo;constitute a giant step backward in the effort to defeat tobacco smoking&rdquo; and &ldquo;send the unintended message to smokers that electronic cigarettes are as dangerous as [traditional cigarettes], with the result that many will simply continue to smoke their current toxic products.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Dr. Joel Nitzkin, former co-chair of the American Association of Public Health Physicians&rsquo; Tobacco Control Task Force, said, &ldquo;e-cigarette vapor presents no threat to non-users that would justify a ban.&rdquo;</p>
<p>And regarding &ldquo;re-normalizing&rdquo; tobacco use, e-cigarettes are hardly a gateway to tobacco; in fact, it&rsquo;s quite the opposite. A recent study of 1,300 college students by the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center researchers found that only 3 percent of students reported e-cigarettes as the first source of nicotine they'd tried. Lead researcher Dr. Theodore Wagener told HealthDay News last fall that it &ldquo;didn't seem as though [e-cigarettes] really proved to be a gateway to anything.&rdquo;</p>
<p>And a report last month from the United Kingdom&rsquo;s Action on Smoking and Health&mdash;a nonprofit started by the Royal College of Physicians that aims to reduce tobacco-related harms&mdash;estimated that the 1.3 million current e-cigarette users in the UK are &ldquo;almost entirely made of current and ex-smokers [&hellip;] with perhaps as many as 400,000 people having replaced smoking with e-cigarette use.&rdquo; By and large, the predominant users of e-cigarettes are tobacco smokers seeking to quit and looking for a much safer alternative.</p>
<p>If the City Council wants people to keep smoking, then banning public e-cigarette might help achieve that goal. However, if they&rsquo;d like to see a reduction in smoking-related harms and improved public health, they should not make it more difficult for smokers to switch to a safer alternative, which would be the practical impact of a &ldquo;vaping&rdquo; ban.</p>
<p><em>Leonard Gilroy is the director of government reform at Reason Foundation (reason.org).</em></p>1013739@http://www.reason.orgFri, 21 Feb 2014 13:43:00 ESTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)Privatization & Government Reform Newsletter #3 (Jan 2014 edition)http://www.reason.org/blog/show/privatization-reform-newsletter3
<p>The January 2014 edition of the <em>Privatization &amp; Government Reform Newsletter</em> is <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/privatization-reform-news-3">now online</a>. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<ul>
<li>STATES: Sampling the State of the State Speeches</li>
<li>EDUCATION: Houston Reducing Achievement Gaps Under Student-Based Budgeting</li>
<li>PUBLIC HEALTH: Rush to Regulate E-Cigarettes May Harm Public Health</li>
<li>PENSIONS: Rhode Island Pension Reform Case Study</li>
<li>SOCIAL FINANCE: New York Launches Social Impact Bond Program</li>
<li>LOTTERIES: Pennsylvania Ends Procurement for Private Lottery Management</li>
<li>PRISONS: The Challenge of Public/Private Cost Comparisons</li>
<li>INNOVATORS IN ACTION: Pioneering Road User Charges in Oregon</li>
<li>News &amp; Notes</li>
<li>Quotable Quotes</li>
</ul>
<p>The full newsletter is <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/privatization-reform-news-3">available here</a>, and previous editions of the newsletter are <a href="http://reason.org/newsletters/privgovreform/">available here</a>.</p>1013718@http://www.reason.orgWed, 29 Jan 2014 17:31:00 ESTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)The Effect of Cigarette Tax Rates on Illicit Trade: Lessons Learned in Canadahttp://www.reason.org/news/show/the-effect-of-cigarette-tax-rates
Reason Foundation & Canadian Taxpayers Federation <p>U.S. President Barack Obama is proposing to raise the federal cigarette tax by nearly $1.00 per pack, hoping to bring in additional tax revenue to help fund universal preschool. Likewise, earlier this year legislators in Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Hampshire put forth&mdash;and passed&mdash;proposals to increase their state&rsquo;s cigarette tax. Such proposals to increase cigarette or tobacco taxes are a politically expedient way to add to state or federal coffers while ostensibly reducing consumption. Since 2000, U.S. states have increased state cigarette tax rates more than 100 times and, generally, smoking prevalence in the U.S. has continued to decline, but is this decline caused by the increase in taxes? If so, what would happen to tobacco consumption if tax rates on cigarettes are cut?</p>
<p>An understandably instinctive answer is that consumption would rise, as the price of cigarettes would presumably fall with the tax cut. However, this instinctive answer assumes that smokers purchase all of their cigarettes through legal means where the sale is taxed. In reality, this is not necessarily the case.</p>
<p>Taxes have been shown to increase the size of black markets and to cause economic activity to move underground as price-sensitive individuals look for creative ways to evade taxation. Studies have shown that in the tobacco industry, consumers&rsquo; willingness to switch from smoking legally purchased cigarettes and tobacco to contraband products increases with tax hikes. Econometric analysis conducted by Jean-Francois Ouellet, Associate Professor of Marketing at HEC Montreal, and his co-authors Mariachiara Restuccia, Alexandre Tellier and Caroline Lacroix, found that each additional dollar in final applicable taxes raises the propensity to resort to consuming contraband cigarettes by 5.1 percent.</p>
<p>This is consistent with the literature pertaining to counterfeit products&mdash;that for a product yielding the same benefit, consumers will typically consider a lowerpriced option despite the fact that it is illegal. And where there is consumer demand for cheaper products, despite legality, there is profit incentive for players to provide those products on the black market.</p>
<p>High cigarette taxes lead to inflated prices, which allow smugglers to profit from bringing cigarettes out of lower-taxed areas and re-selling them into highertaxed jurisdictions. For instance, in the United States, cigarette prices differ from state to state depending on the states&rsquo; cigarette tax regimes. Therefore, cigarettes sold in states with low tax rates can be bought and re-sold on the black market in states with high tax rates, yielding a profit for the seller. High taxes also increase the incentive for producing illegal cigarettes completely outside the tax regime. In this case, cigarettes are produced in illegal, unregulated factories and sold on the black market.</p>
<p>The sum effect of these factors suggests that it is possible that rather than reducing cigarette consumption, high taxes might shift some consumption from the legal to the black market&mdash;that is, to smuggled and/or illegally produced cigarettes. The corollary of this is that tax cuts could drive out illicit trade without increasing overall cigarette consumption.</p>
<p>Due to its dramatically varied cigarette taxation rates over the past two decades, Canada has witnessed first-hand the effects that taxes can have on illegal tobacco sales. It therefore provides an excellent case study of the effects of both increasing and decreasing such taxes. This policy brief begins with some background on tobacco taxes in Canadian history. It then analyzes how various changes in the law, both tax increases and cuts, have affected illicit trade, informing policy-makers on likely effects of taxation.</p>1013687@http://www.reason.orgThu, 09 Jan 2014 08:00:00 ESTinfo@reason.org (Katie Furtick)E-Cigarette Regulations Likely to Harm Anti-Smoking Efforts, Yet NYC Still Considers Banhttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/e-cigarette-regs-nyc
<p>In <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/e-cigarette-regulation-harm">my latest <em>Orange County Register</em> column</a>, I note that the wave of regulations local officials are enacting or proposing to restrict the sale or use of e-cigarettes is more likely to harm public health instead of benefit it, primarily by making it more difficult for smokers to transition to safer nicotine delivery alternatives, thus keeping them smoking longer. Here's an excerpt:</p>
<blockquote>The rationales for these regulatory actions vary, but often revolve around misplaced fears that e-cigarettes will serve as a gateway to the use of conventional cigarettes by kids and non-smokers, as well as misperceptions that e-cigarette vapor is as harmful as cigarette smoke to users and bystanders.<br /><br />Both fears are unsupported by evidence. Regarding the &ldquo;gateway&rdquo; theory, the Register reported last month that a University of Oklahoma study found that only 43 out of 1,300 college students (3.3 percent) reported that e-cigarettes were the first form of nicotine they'd tried, with only one student later taking up regular cigarette smoking.<br /><br />And there is growing evidence that e-cigarettes have nearly none of the harmful properties of conventional cigarettes, primarily because nothing is burned in &ldquo;vaping,&rdquo; so it doesn&rsquo;t produce the cancer-causing toxins and multitude of chemicals that result from the combustion of tobacco. A study released by Drexel University&rsquo;s School of Public Health this fall found no evidence that e-cigarettes expose users or bystanders to levels of contaminants that would warrant health concerns.</blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact that <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/13/poll-americans-dont-want-to-ban-trans2">62 of Americans support governments allowing the use of e-cigarettes in public places</a>, New York City is one of those cities where politicians seem bent on regulation...in this case, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/06/new-york-city-proposal-seeks-ban-on-using-electronic-cigarettes-in-public/">proposing to loop e-cigs into the city's public smoking ban</a>. CASAA, the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association, <a href="http://casaa.org">reports</a> that the City Council may take action on the proposal as early as this week.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2013/12/8537425/city-hall-pro-bloomberg-legacy-blizzard-de-blasios-chancellor-choi">reported today</a> on Politico's Capital New York <em>City Hall Pro</em> newsletter, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona has sent a <a href="http://goo.gl/knX8xY">letter</a> to NYC council members warning that the proposed regulation could be counterproductive to the city's anti-smoking efforts. An excerpt:</p>
<blockquote>[...] Legislative action that would keep smokers smoking would obviously have serious health consequences &ndash; and could cost lives. Worse still, it could lead to the adoption of similar ordinances in other cities, creating a domino effect that would further magnify the potential public health danger in this scientifically unsupported approach.<br /><br />I will also observe that the concerns expressed about the possibilities that electronic cigarettes could addict non-smokers, condemning them to a lifetime struggle with nicotine addiction, echo concerns expressed about nicotine gums and patches when these first were introduced to the market. We have seen clearly, however, that such products did not have that affect. At the same time, while gums and patches have helped a small minority of smokers successfully quit smoking, it is clear to those of us have been engaged in this battle that we need more impactful solutions to the continuing problem of tobacco smoking, and that is where we see electronic cigarettes playing a central role.</blockquote>
<p>Read the full letter <a href="http://goo.gl/knX8xY">here</a>. Be sure to check out <a href="http://nation.time.com/2013/12/16/regulating-e-cigarettes-could-have-unintended-consequences/">this new <em>Time</em> article</a> by Eliza Gray and <a href="http://nypost.com/2013/12/16/bloomberg-trying-to-ban-e-cigarettes-is-silly/">today's&nbsp;<em>New York Post</em> op-ed</a> by National Council for Public Policy Research senior fellow Jeff Stier as well. Also, be sure to check out Reason.com's archive of material on e-cigarettes <a href="http://reason.com/search?f[pagetype][]=all-magazine-articles&amp;f[pagetype][]=all-reasontv-videos&amp;f[pagetype][]=brickbats&amp;f[pagetype][]=customer-support-and-general-pages&amp;f[pagetype][]=hit-and-run-posts&amp;f[pagetype][]=reason-rupe-poll-posts&amp;f[pagetype][]=web-articles&amp;q=e-cigarette">here</a>.</p>1013669@http://www.reason.orgMon, 16 Dec 2013 14:20:00 ESTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)E-Cigarette Regulations Likely To Do More Harmhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/e-cigarette-regulation-harm
Orange County Register <p>Regulations in Southern California, and across the nation, to limit the use and sale of electronic cigarettes are spreading rapidly. But like so many well-intentioned policies, these e-cigarette regulations are far more likely to harm public health and anti-smoking efforts than benefit them.</p>
<p>Officials in Los Angeles and Long Beach, along with places like New York City and Chicago, are considering new ordinances to add e-cigarettes to public smoking bans, something officials in Lakewood, Richmond, and other California communities have already enacted.</p>
<p>Southern California cities like Seal Beach, Bellflower, Cerritos, Norwalk, Duarte and Alhambra have all enacted moratoria this year preventing new e-cigarette retailers from opening within their borders, stifling entrepreneurs in a rapidly emerging product market.</p>
<p>And the California legislature considered a bill to add e-cigarettes to the statewide smoking ban earlier this year, a proposal that is likely to return next year.</p>
<p>The rationales for these regulatory actions vary, but often revolve around misplaced fears that e-cigarettes will serve as a gateway to the use of conventional cigarettes by kids and non-smokers, as well as misperceptions that e-cigarette vapor is as harmful as cigarette smoke to users and bystanders.</p>
<p>Both fears are unsupported by evidence. Regarding the &ldquo;gateway&rdquo; theory, the Register reported last month that a University of Oklahoma study found that only 43 out of 1,300 college students (3.3 percent) reported that e-cigarettes were the first form of nicotine they'd tried, with only one student later taking up regular cigarette smoking.</p>
<p>And there is growing evidence that e-cigarettes have nearly none of the harmful properties of conventional cigarettes, primarily because nothing is burned in &ldquo;vaping,&rdquo; so it doesn&rsquo;t produce the cancer-causing toxins and multitude of chemicals that result from the combustion of tobacco. A study released by Drexel University&rsquo;s School of Public Health this fall found no evidence that e-cigarettes expose users or bystanders to levels of contaminants that would warrant health concerns.</p>
<p>This helps to explain why public health experts are increasingly endorsing e-cigarettes as a solid alternative to smoking and recommending against policies to limit their sale or use. For example, Dr. Joel Nitzkin, former co-chair of the American Association of Public Health Physicians&rsquo; Tobacco Control Task Force, recently stated, &ldquo;Exhaled e-cigarette vapor presents no threat to non-users that would justify a ban [&hellip;] Misrepresenting e-cigarettes to be as harmful as cigarettes is both factually incorrect and damaging to public health.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, University of Stirling Professor Gerard Hastings, co-author of a recent Cancer Research UK report on e-cigarettes, said, &ldquo;E-cigarettes and other alternative nicotine delivery devices are probably much safer than conventional cigarettes, and so if smokers switch to them many lives could be saved.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona echoed a similar sentiment in testimony recently submitted to New York&rsquo;s City Council. Carmona urged officials to resist the &ldquo;well-intentioned but scientifically un-supported effort&rdquo; to include e-cigarettes in the city&rsquo;s smoking ban, which would &ldquo;constitute a giant step backward in the effort to defeat tobacco smoking&rdquo; and &ldquo;send the unintended message to smokers that electronic cigarettes are as dangerous as [traditional cigarettes], with the result that many will simply continue to smoke their current toxic products.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Southern California has been a hotbed of regulations aimed at stifling e-cigarette sales and use. It&rsquo;s time to take a different approach. A new Reason-Rupe national poll finds 62 percent of Americans believe people should be allowed to use e-cigarettes in public places. And if the goal is to minimize smoking-related illnesses and diseases, then California policymakers should reject counterproductive policies and preserve the ability of smokers to seek safer nicotine delivery alternatives like e-cigarettes that minimize harm to themselves and others.</p>
<p><em>Leonard Gilroy is the director of government reform at Reason Foundation. This article was <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cigarettes-541029-smoking-california.html">originally published</a> in the </em>Orange County Register<em> on December 10, 2013</em>.</p>1013667@http://www.reason.orgMon, 16 Dec 2013 00:00:00 ESTleonard.gilroy@reason.org (Leonard Gilroy)California E-Cigarette Bill Not Based On Evidencehttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/california-e-cigarette-bill-not-bas
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<p>Electronic cigarettes, commonly known as e-cigarettes, are battery-powered devices that vaporize liquid solutions containing nicotine and sometimes additives for flavors. Unlike cigarettes, no combustion is involved and only vapors are emitted. <a href="http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2810%2900792-0/abstract">Research</a> has <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/786">suggested</a> that <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2011.02751.x/abstract">many</a> individuals currently use the smokeless devices to assist in smoking cessation.</p>
<p>To date, there has been limited <a href="http://www.jmir.org/2013/4/e59/">research</a> examining the health effects of e-cigarette use. While some studies have <a href="https://www.ersnetsecure.org/public/prg_congres.abstract?ww_i_presentation=59718">been</a> done and found effects on the pulmonary system, research has focused primarily on acute effects. A <a href="http://&atilde;&deg;&acirc;&iexcl;hestjourna1.chestpubs.org/data/Journals/CHEST/24233/112443.pdf">June 2012</a> peer-reviewed study examined the acute effects of e-cigarette use on breathing resistance--a measure of respiratory inflammation. Relative to controls, study participants who used an e-cigarette device were found to have slightly higher lung resistance.&nbsp; The study found that there were "immediate adverse physiologic effects after short-term use that are similar to some of the effects seen with tobacco smoking." However, the study authors cautioned "that although the differences within our study are of statistical significance, the clinical changes may be too small to be of major clinical importance," and encouraged long-term research. They also suggested that "it is possible that if e-cigarette use were a short-term bridge to smoking cessation, the long-term health benefits associated with their use might outweight the short-term risks."</p>
<p>Further <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120825155658.htm">research</a> into effects on heart function prompted one researcher to state that "laboratory analyses indicate that it is significantly less toxic and our study has shown no significant defects in cardiac function after acute use." Research on secondhand exposure to e-cigarettes has been even more limited. In contrast, there exists extensive evidence that cigarette smoking not only is associated with a litany of negative health outcomes, but that secondhand exposure can be harmful to others. In brief, there is still significant research that needs to be done to discern what the long-term health consequences are, and how extensively electronic cigarettes impair health functions in the short-term.</p>
<p>Currently, California does not have laws as to where an individual may use e-cigarettes. Restrictions on where an individual can smoke are presumably grounded in this empirical research.</p>
<p><a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB648">Senate Bill 648</a>, sponsored by Senator Ellen Corbett (D-East Bay) would extend existing restrictions on where cigarettes are smoked to e-cigarettes. Voting in support of the bill means that the State of California &ldquo;finds and declares that regulation of smoking in the workplace is a matter of statewide interest and concern,&rdquo; and that as a result, e-cigarettes must be treated the same as cigarettes.</p>
<p>Bill analysis for the Senate Committee on Health summarizes the goal of the bills thusly: &ldquo;(a) to minimize the use of products that pose unknown health risks particularly unregulated products that deliver drugs such as nicotine to the user; and (b) to prevent confusion in the enforcement of smoke-free laws caused by the perception that e-cigarette smokers are actually smoking conventional cigarettes.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The bill analysis cites opposition arguments that &ldquo;electronic cigarettes have not been shown to cause harm to bystanders, and the evidence to date shows that health risk associated with electronic cigarettes is comparable to other smokeless nicotine products&hellip;&rdquo; The only response to these claims are vague concerns over the "potential" negative health effects of e-cigarettes and e-cigarette exposure.</p>
<p>The limited amount of research done seemingly supports the idea that e-cigarette vapor really isn't a significant risk. A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23033998">2012 study</a> in <em style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Inhalation Toxicology</em> sought to determine the impact on air quality that &ldquo;high nicotine e-liquids&rdquo; had compared to tobacco smoke. The study concluded that &ldquo;electronic cigarettes produce very small exposures relative to tobacco cigarettes,&rdquo; and that the study &ldquo;indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions based on the compounds analyzed.&rdquo; A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23467656">2013 study</a> published in <em>Tobacco Control</em> studied vapors from 12 brands of e-cigarettes for toxicants and carcinogens found in tobacco smoke. The researchers found that while some toxicants were found in the vapors, "levels of the toxicants were 9-450 times lower than in cigarette smoke" and concluded that "substituting tobacco cigarettes with e-cigarettes may substantially reduce exposure to selected tobacco-specific toxicants."</p>
<p>Despite this, the California Senate voted 21-10 anyway to expand cigarette restrictions onto e-cigarettes. The California Assembly is expected to take up the bill when they get back from summer recess in August.</p>
<p>The bill purports to be proactive in restricting the freedom of individuals to engage in what apparently, to the California Senate, &ldquo;is a matter of statewide interest and concern.&rdquo; &nbsp;Existing and proposed legislation infringing on the decision making of business owners as to whether or not certain (non-criminal) behaviors (e.g. e-cigarette uses) should be permitted on <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">their</em> property serve only to cheapen the value of law and extend government power into areas of life it doesn&rsquo;t need to be involved with. Considering the lack of evidence that e-cigarette consumption is a &ldquo;matter of statewide interest and concern&rdquo; and that the only available evidence shows that it apparently poses &ldquo;no apparent risk to human health,&rdquo; we can only hope that California Assembly members ask themselves: Do we really need this law?</p>1013460@http://www.reason.orgFri, 12 Jul 2013 15:11:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (Sal Rodriguez)Obamas Cigarette Tax Will Hurt the Poor While Enriching Politicians Friendshttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/obamas-cigarette-tax-will-hurt-the
<p><span style="font-size: 10px;">CNN <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/10/news/economy/cigarette-tax/">is reporting</a> that President Obama wants to raise federal cigarette taxes by 94 cents per pack:&nbsp;</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The tax is being presented as way to fund education and reduce smoking rates. It would raise roughly $78 billion over 10 years.</p>
<p>"The proposed tobacco tax increase would have substantial public health benefits, particularly for young Americans," the president's budget read. "Researchers have found that raising taxes on cigarettes significantly reduces consumption, with especially large effects on youth smoking."</p>
<p>After a 62-cent-a-pack tax hike was passed in 2009, cigarette sales dropped by 10%, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tax is being sold as a way to help the poor, with the revenue supposedly going to early childhood education programs. But if the results of state cigarette taxes are any indication, the tax will disproportionately hurt the poor, fund programs directly connected to politicians and negatively impact small businesses, all while consistently failing to meet revenue goals.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Cigarette taxes hurt the poor</strong></p>
<p>Cigarette taxes are extremely regressive. The poor <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/georgias-proposed-cigarette-tax-inc">pay a larger chunk of their income</a> to the tax than the wealthy. This is further exacerbated by the fact that low-income, low-education and minority populations all smoke more than high-income, high-education and white populations, and by a good bit. <a href="http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/05/25/whosmokes/">Nearly a third of people</a> below the poverty line smoke, while only 18% of those at or above the poverty line do. A tax on cigarettes is therefore paid mostly by society&rsquo;s poorest individuals.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Cigarette tax revenue goes to politicians&rsquo; friends</strong></p>
<p>In theory the revenue from cigarette taxes helps low-income populations by xyz. But as Reason&rsquo;s Adrian Moore has pointed out, in reality bureaucrats often use it to fund projects their friends run.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In California, a cigarette tax was supposed to fund health, safety and educational programs for children. Instead, a San Diego county commission spent at least $67 million of that money to help ensure the continued employment of members of their advisory board. Almost 60% of early childhood grants went to organizations with direct ties to the commission. Another California commission used cigarette tax dollars to <a href="http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2006-114.pdf">overpay</a> a contractor by over a half million dollars. Then $800 million <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/la-county-seeks-takeover-of-first-5-la.html">just sat around</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said First 5 LA was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars of unspent taxpayer funds, and criticized the staff for a lack of transparency, accountability and competitive bidding.</p>
<p>"It's sitting on over $800 million," Yaroslavsky said. "And some of it for good reason, and some of it for no apparent good reason. It's just been sitting there and accumulating." First 5 LA's annual operating budget is about $180 million a year.</p>
<p>An audit by Harvey M. Rose of San Francisco found First 5 LA's commission was unable to monitor money that was being spent "since monthly programmatic expenditures are not presented relative to a budget." Auditors also concluded the agency was overstaffed while under-spending on programs for children.&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Cigarette taxes don&rsquo;t raise much revenue</strong></p>
<p>Not only are cigarette taxes regressive, but they often <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/1011898.html">fail to meet</a> their revenue estimates. Reason&rsquo;s Anthony Randazzo <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/1011898.html">notes</a> &ldquo;revenue from Gov. Pawlenty&rsquo;s 2005 tax increase was estimated to generate $174 million per year, but Minnesota's cigarette tax revenue has only increased by an average of $4 million per year&mdash;a paltry 2.72 percent of the estimate.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>
<p>Similarly, a 2008 <a href="http://illinoispolicy.org/uploads/files/Tobacco%20Tax%20PP_1.pdf">Maryland cigarette tax increase</a> only yielded half the projected additional revenue.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mackinac.org/14210">This Mackinac Center for Public Policy study shows</a> the states which are top destinations for smuggled cigarettes:</p>
<ol>
<li>New Jersey</li>
<li>New York</li>
<li>Vermont</li>
<li>Massachusetts</li>
<li>Connecticut&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
<p>The Mackinac Center also reports that more than 40 percent of the cigarettes smoked in Rhode Island are purchased on the black market or in other states. That represents a huge loss of revenue to state government and local businesses. In the face of the data, many states are cutting their cigarette taxes.</p>
<p>Taking money from poor people, hurting state businesses, filtering it through bureaucrats who are likely to waste it and funnel it toward connected organizations, and then cutting those programs that do get funded when sales decrease didn&rsquo;t make sense for states and it doesn&rsquo;t make any more sense on a national level.&nbsp;</p>1013328@http://www.reason.orgFri, 12 Apr 2013 14:18:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (Cathy Reisenwitz)Minnesota's Misguided Cigarette Taxhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/minnesotas-misguided-cigarette-tax
<p>There is a sense of bitter irony in Democratic Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton&rsquo;s new cigarette tax proposal, which is aimed at bridging the Gopher State&rsquo;s budget gap. In 2005, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty used an increase in cigarette taxes&mdash;which he called a &ldquo;user fee&rdquo;&mdash;to solve a state budget crisis that had shut down the government. Yet today Minnesota finds itself right back in state finance hell.</p>
<p>With his government ground to a halt for a week now, Gov. Dayton&rsquo;s proposed <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430462770332764.html?mod=googlenews_wsj"> $1 per pack</a> increase on cigarette taxes was offered as an alternative to an income tax surcharge on millionaires, but state Republicans rejected it anyway, on the grounds that any tax increase was off the table.</p>
<p>Lost in the shuffle is the fact that Pawlenty&rsquo;s &ldquo;user fee&rdquo; and Gov. Dayton&rsquo;s proposed pack attack are problematic for more than just political reasons. Trying to cover a budget shortfall with a cigarette tax&mdash;or any sin tax&mdash;is an irresponsible idea. Taxes on cigarettes tend to drive business out of state and yield unreliable revenue, which only creates future budget woes. And cigarette taxes are not user fees&mdash;since the specific tax revenues are not used on services for smokers, but instead go towards general state spending.</p>
<p>Lawmakers in St. Paul and in other state capitols should read the warning label from Minnesota&rsquo;s 2005 tax &ldquo;solution&rdquo; and recognize that revenue from cigarettes does not tackle the underlying issue&mdash;government spending that has outpaced revenues.</p>
<p>Even if the proposed tax were accepted and the budget passed in Minnesota, the state could be right back where it started within just a few months. Additional revenue from Gov. Pawlenty&rsquo;s 2005 tax increase was estimated to generate <a href="http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press_releases/post/id_0854">$174 million per year</a>, but Minnesota's cigarette tax revenue has only increased by an average of $4 million per year&mdash;a paltry 2.72 percent of the estimate.</p>
<p>And Minnesota isn&rsquo;t alone: A 2008 <a href="http://illinoispolicy.org/uploads/files/Tobacco%20Tax%20PP_1.pdf">Maryland cigarette tax increase</a> only yielded 50 percent of projected additional revenue while cigarette tax revenue in Illinois has decreased by $69 million since 2007. Overall, only 30 percent of cigarette tax increases between 2003 and 2007 have met revenue projections&mdash;not a record on which to stake a state&rsquo;s future. No matter what projected additional revenue Gov. Dayton thinks a $1 per pack cigarette tax increase will yield, it will most likely not come to fruition as regular smokers go elsewhere to purchase their cigarettes and causal users cut back. &nbsp;</p>
<p>When New York raised its cigarette tax in 2010, neighboring counties in Vermont and Pennsylvania saw an increase in cigarette sales of between 17 and 30 percent. This is because while increases such as Gov. Dayton&rsquo;s proposal&mdash;which would raise the total tax per pack <a href="http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/cigarette.pdf">to $2.23 in Minnesota</a>&mdash;are not enough to impact consumption, they are enough to drive smokers to shop out of state. New Yorkers simply took a little trek across the state border to save a few dollars. Those few dollars add up over time.</p>
<p>Minnesotans might do the same, traveling to the Dakotas or Iowa where tax rates on cigarettes are much lower. And the current rate in Minnesota is <em>already</em> three times North Dakota&rsquo;s rate.</p>
<p>More damningly, the &ldquo;Land of 10,000 Lakes&rdquo; would lose revenue from cross border purchases from Wisconsin, where a $2.52 tax rate on cigarettes drives business away. The lost consumer traffic and subsequent depleted tax revenue would not be good for Minnesotan businesses or the state's budget shortfall.</p>
<p>States with high cigarette taxes tend to be more fiscally irresponsible than others. Of the <a href="http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0097.pdf">top 10</a> highest cigarette taxing states, six received a C+ or worse in the most recent <a href="http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp_report_card_details.aspx?id=35350"> Pew Center Money Performance</a> rating, which examines a state&rsquo;s fiscal responsibility. The correlation is typically because increasing cigarette taxes is often a last resort when real fiscal responsibility has been eschewed.</p>
<p>Minnesota has a spending problem, as do a number of other states facing budget gaps for next year&mdash;such as Nevada, Oregon, and Texas. It is time for governors and state lawmakers to take a cue from the Minnesota d&eacute;j&agrave; vu and recognize that taxing cigarettes won&rsquo;t solve the underlying problem.</p>
<p><em><a href="/experts/show/anthony-randazzo">Anthony Randazzo</a> is director of economic research at Reason Foundation. Carson Bruno is a research assistant at Reason Foundation. This column <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/08/minnesotas-tax-failure-warning">first appeared</a> at Reason.com.<br /></em></p>1011898@http://www.reason.orgFri, 08 Jul 2011 18:00:00 EDTanthony.randazzo@reason.org (Anthony Randazzo)Smoked Outhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/smoked-out
<p>Arizona has a major public health problem: Too few people are smoking.</p>
<p>That&rsquo;s not the only fiscal problem the state faces. But it&rsquo;s one of them. Like many states, Arizona&rsquo;s public finances are in miserable shape. And much of the state&rsquo;s budget trouble can be attributed to a decade-old decision to finance an expansion of low-income health insurance coverage with revenue dependent on tobacco industry profits.</p>
<p>A little more than a decade ago, the state grew its low-income health insurance rolls, claiming the new enrollees would be paid for by revenue from a deal with tobacco industry. Now, with smoking rates (and tobacco industry revenues) falling, a budget crisis brewing, and a growing number of individuals eligible for Medicaid, the state has chosen to pare back its health coverage for low-income adults.</p>
<p>Starting July 8, the state&rsquo;s Medicaid program will implement changes expected to reduce the program&rsquo;s rolls by 117,000 single, childless adults over the next year. After much delay, the Obama administration last week finally granted Arizona permission to go through with the cuts, but only grudgingly. "We regret the action Arizona is taking,"&nbsp;a federal Medicaid official <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/07/01/20110701arizona-medicaid-freeze-feds-ok.html"> told <em>The Arizona Republic</em>.</a></p>
<p>But looking back on their Medicaid program&rsquo;s recent history, Arizonans may have some regrets of their own. Initially, the state was reluctant to join Medicaid, waiting until 1982 before entering the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor and disabled.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p>
<p>In 1998, the state signed onto the Master Settlement Agreement, a nationwide deal between state attorneys general and the major players in the tobacco industry. As part of the agreement, the tobacco industry agreed to compensate the public for years of health costs incurred by the public due to smoking-related illnesses through a series of payments to the states.</p>
<p>It was win-win for both sides: The tobacco industry got rid of its legal liability once and for all and the states created a new revenue source initially estimated to provide $206 billion during its first 25 years of existence&mdash;no tax hikes required. Arizona was entitled to 1.5 percent of the total.</p>
<p>The deal was sold to the public as a sort of financial justice. After decades of imposing billions in public health costs on taxpayers, the tobacco industry was finally forced to pay for its sins. But the practical effect was to make states partners with the very industry those states were ostensibly trying to punish.</p>
<p>Arizona was determined to put the partnership, and the revenue it was expected to provide, to use. In November 2000, the state&rsquo;s voters passed Proposition 204, which expanded Medicaid coverage to childless adults to 100 percent of the federal poverty line, up from the federal mandate of 34 percent.</p>
<p>Medicaid&rsquo;s crude fiscal incentives were too good to resist. The program is funded via a generous federal matching grant, so for every dollar that Arizona spent expanding Medicaid, the federal government would pitch in with an additional $1.96. There&rsquo;s no limit to the amount of matching funds a state can obtain, so the bigger the expansion, the more federal money a state can nab.</p>
<p>And it was all supposed to be free. Voters were promised in a &ldquo;Fiscal Analysis&rdquo; that the expansion could be &ldquo;fully funded by Arizona&rsquo;s share of the Tobacco Settlement,&rdquo; <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/RobertRobb/129976">according</a> to columnist Robert Robb. A fact sheet distributed by the proposition&rsquo;s supporters said that it would use &ldquo;no state tax money.&rdquo; The magic combination of tobacco settlement revenue and federal matching funds was irresistible for both the state&rsquo;s political class and its voters. In theory, the program would expand dramatically&mdash;and at no cost to taxpayers.</p>
<p>It sounded too good to be true&mdash;and it was. As Michael Greve, a <a href="http://www.aei.org/outlook/28340">senior fellow</a> at the American Enterprise Institute, noted in a 2008 report, &ldquo;it soon became clear that the MSA funds (and the federal dollars that they leverage) would not remotely cover Proposition 204's expansion of the Medicaid population and services.&rdquo; &nbsp;</p>
<p>The state faced two problems. First, the actual price tag on the Medicaid expansion came in higher than expected. Second, smoking rates&mdash;and thus tobacco industry revenues&mdash;were on the decline; <a href="http://www.csg.org/knowledgecenter/docs/TA0203Tobacco.pdf">by 2002</a>, states had already received 14 percent less in tobacco payments than projected.</p>
<p>And so the program&rsquo;s costs dipped further into the general fund. According to the state government, general fund revenue dedicated to Medicaid has increased by nearly 65 percent since 2009 alone. Now Medicaid accounts for around 29 percent of the state&rsquo;s total general fund spending, up from 8 percent when Prop. 204 passed.</p>
<p>The federal-match incentives that made expanding the program so tempting initially also made it equally difficult to cut. What politician would willingly cut three dollars in benefits to save just one dollar in the state budget?</p>
<p>Faced with a billion-dollar budget hole, however, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer finally took the plunge this year, calling for cuts that are expected to save a half billion dollars, including an estimated $190 million this year.</p>
<p>The only question remaining is whether the state will be permitted to make the cuts. Despite promises that no state tax revenue would be used, Prop. 204&rsquo;s text says that in order to pay for the coverage expansion, tobacco industry funds &ldquo;shall be supplemented, as necessary, by any other available sources including legislative appropriations and federal monies.&rdquo; Critics of the cuts have taken the state to court, arguing that it has an obligation to fund the expanded benefits through supplemental measures, regardless of MSA funding or other budgetary troubles.</p>
<p>So a law sold on a promise that health coverage would be expanded without state tax revenues is now being reinterpreted as an obligation to use additional state tax revenues to fund the coverage expansion&mdash;whether legislators want to or not. Where are the smokers when you need them?</p>
<p><em>Peter Suderman is an associate editor at</em> Reason <em>magazine. This column <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/06/smoked-out">first appeared</a> at Reason.com.<br /></em></p>1011890@http://www.reason.orgWed, 06 Jul 2011 16:30:00 EDTpeter.suderman@reason.org (Peter Suderman)Unsafe at Any Speedhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/unsafe-at-any-speed
<p>When Washington unveiled its graphic new warning labels for cigarettes last week, several wits asked whether the federal government would slap similar warnings on its own products. To cite just one example: How many innocent civilians have died from unnecessary wars?</p>
<p>True, everyone already knows war is hell. But government policies can kill people in far less obvious ways. Take vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. The Obama administration has floated a proposal to more than double Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 56.2 mpg.</p>
<p>As usual, the auto industry says it can't be done. But it can be, or could be. The only question is whether society is willing to pay the cost. The higher standards would raise vehicle prices, by anywhere from $770 (the government's low-end estimate) to $10,000 (the Center for Automotive Research).</p>
<p>Yet that is only the most obvious price. Higher fuel-economy standards also would increase highway fatalities. That is because the most effective method of increasing gasoline mileage is to make cars smaller and lighter, which makes them more dangerous.</p>
<p>Can auto makers improve gas mileage in other ways? Sure they can. But engineers can squeeze only so much efficiency out of engines before the law of diminishing marginal returns kicks in. Same goes for better aerodynamics, keeping your tires properly inflated and so on. Steps like those will help&mdash;a little. To get where Washington wants to go requires far more radical changes.</p>
<p>That is why higher gasoline taxes have won endorsement from unusual suspects such as General Motors CEO Dan Akerson and Ford Motor Co.'s Bill Ford. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Sam Kazman noted in a recent piece for <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, "In 2009 . . . Ford [cited] the need for a 'price signal . . . strong enough so customers will continue buying smaller, fuel-efficient cars.'" (Customers don't flock to them on their own because, among other things, big families need big vehicles.)</p>
<p>Advocates of higher CAFE standards are correct when they insist better safety features can mitigate some of the damage done by mandating smaller, lighter cars. But this is a rhetorical head-fake. True, a small car with crumple zones and airbags is safer than a big car that doesn't have them. But a big car with those same safety features is even safer than that.</p>
<p>Research from a wide variety of sources has borne this out time and again. A 1989 study by Harvard and the Brookings Institution found that CAFE standards caused a 500-pound reduction in the average vehicle, resulting in additional deaths of 2,200 to 3,900 persons per decade, depending on the model in question.</p>
<p>In 1999, <em>USA Today</em> reported that CAFE standards had been responsible for 46,000 deaths since 1978. In 2003, a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found that reducing a vehicle's weight by 100 pounds increased fatality rates 3 percent for light trucks, 4.7 percent for big cars, and 5.6 percent for small cars.</p>
<p>Well, you get the point. In any contest between a big car and a small car, the laws of physics dictate that the big car will win. As the CEI's Kazman notes, "SUVs heavier than 4,500 pounds have a death rate less than one-third that of cars under 2,500 pounds."</p>
<p>Advocates of higher CAFE standards say the answer is simple: Get rid of all the big cars. Problem solved, right?</p>
<p>Wrong&mdash;not unless we're also going to shrink trees, telephone poles, and bridge abutments too. Ask yourself: Would you rather hit a telephone pole at 30 mph on a 600-pound Harley-Davidson motorcycle, or inside a 60-ton Abrams tank? In 2009 the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported: "Occupants of smaller cars are at increased risk in all kinds of crashes, not just ones with heavier vehicles. Almost half of all crash deaths in [small cars] occur in single-vehicle crashes, and these deaths wouldn't be reduced if all cars became smaller and lighter." As the IIHS' Russ Rader put it last year, "We're trading more crash deaths for better fuel economy. That's the bottom line."</p>
<p>Well, so what? Society makes cost-benefit analyses all the time. Washington even has a standard figure, known as the value of a statistical life, to help it decide if a given regulation does more good than harm. So maybe, if you're of a strongly environmentalist bent and you believe we're killing the planet with exhaust fumes, you still think higher CAFE standards are worth the lives they will cost. Fair enough. That's a value judgment.</p>
<p>Still: Shouldn't it come with a warning label?</p>
<p><em>A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This column <a href="http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/jul/01/tdopin02-hinkle-fuel-economy-standards-need-a-warn-ar-1144573/"> originally appeared</a> at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. <br /></em></p>1011880@http://www.reason.orgFri, 01 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (A. Barton Hinkle )Nanny State Propagandahttp://www.reason.org/news/show/nanny-state-propaganda
<p>Don&rsquo;t get too used to those graphic new cigarette warnings Washington regulators unveiled last week. They&rsquo;re going to disappear one way or the other.</p>
<p>The courts might throw them out on First Amendment grounds. That seems unlikely. But if the judicial branch doesn&rsquo;t get rid of them, the executive branch will. Not because it decided they were too repulsive. No, federal authorities plan to update the warning labels to keep the shock value fresh.</p>
<p>"We&rsquo;ll begin . . . studies to make sure that we are keeping people sensitized," says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius. "What may seem quite shocking at the beginning, people get used to quite quickly." So if people build up a tolerance for the repulsive, the FDA will amp the dial up to grotesque.</p>
<p>Although the placement of graphic warning labels on commercial products is novel in the U.S., government&rsquo;s use of the gross-out is nothing new. Wartime propaganda posters of an earlier age routinely depicted the enemy as monstrous beasts to be slain or subhuman bugs to be exterminated.</p>
<p>Of course, no one backing the new warning labels would call them propaganda. Rather, the FDA&rsquo;s Lawrence Deyton says, "We are trying to communicate accurate, truthful information about the health impact of smoking, to allow consumers to be informed."</p>
<p>That is a lie. The old warnings&mdash;informing buyers that cigarettes cause cancer, and so forth&mdash;conveyed information. The new labels are designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain thoughts never reach. A warning on a ladder that reads, "Caution: Improper use could lead to serious injury from falling" conveys information. A graphic photo of a compound tibia fracture conveys only sentiment.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s the kind of cheap trick you could play with just about anything. Take exercise. Sporting-equipment companies glamorize it just as cigarette companies glamorize smoking, with beautiful idols looking too cool for school as they engage in the activity. But you could de-glamorize exercise in a hurry by forcing people to view pictures of dislocated shoulders, torn ligaments, and genitals covered in raging cases of jock itch.</p>
<p>Since the gross-out is cross-functional, it&rsquo;s reasonable to ask when the federal government will start showing us disgusting pictures on packages of food, in which Washington also takes a keen interest. Indeed, someone asked Sibelius that very question during a press conference about the cigarette labels. Her response was evasive. Food labels are voluntary, she said. And tobacco is unique because smoking is "the No. 1 cause of preventable death."</p>
<p>It won&rsquo;t be No. 1 forever. Obesity is gaining ground fast. Sibelius says smoking imposes "$200 billion a year in health costs." According to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity costs the U.S. about $150 billion. Ergo, Sibelius says the government has an interest in food because "it has a lot to do with underlying health costs and [the] overall health of our nation. . . . The work around obesity and healthier, more nutritious eating" will be "an ongoing focus."</p>
<p>Do tell. Already the federal government has organized an Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children in "an effort to combat childhood obesity &ndash; the most serious health crisis facing today&rsquo;s youth."</p>
<p>The working group&mdash;comprising the FTC, the CDC, the FDA, and the Agriculture Department&mdash;already has proposed that food companies either (a) change their child-centered products to make them healthier or (b) lose the right to advertise them. The proposal is ostensibly voluntary. But then so is paying the Mafia protection money not to burn down your store.</p>
<p>In brief, the arc of food regulation seems to be following the arc of tobacco regulation: "voluntary" measures imposed "for the sake of the children" at first&mdash;followed by less voluntary, more comprehensive regulation undertaken for the sake of the common good, defined in both public-health terms and public-finance terms. What&rsquo;s more, the same assumption holds in both cases: The government should direct personal behavior that has any effect on other people. Since any behavior can be said to affect somebody else in some way, this is a recipe for a government of infinite scope.</p>
<p>Two days after Washington unveiled its new warning labels for cigarette packages, the <em>New England Journal of Medicine</em> published a study reporting that our food choices influence our weight more than exercise does. And potato chips pack on the pounds faster than any other food, including candy and desserts.</p>
<p>The logic of Washington&rsquo;s new cigarette warning labels holds that government should frighten people away from consumer goods that impose social costs. If we apply that consistently, then there is no reason federal regulators should not adorn bags of potato chips with garish photos of morbidly obese corpses, cutaways of clogged ateries, or glistening mounds of fatty tissue hacked out of cadavers.</p>
<p>If that doesn&rsquo;t slim America down enough, then perhaps Washington also will make everybody exercise for an hour a day. The idea sounds laughably implausible now. So what? As Secretary Sibelius says: "What may seem quite shocking at the beginning, people get used to quite quickly."</p>
<p><em>A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article <a href="http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/rtd-opinion/2011/jun/28/tdopin02-hinkle-want-to-see-a-corpse-on-a-can-of-p-ar-1136851/"> originally appeared</a> at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. <br /></em></p>1011862@http://www.reason.orgWed, 29 Jun 2011 16:30:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (A. Barton Hinkle )Big Government Gets Uglyhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/big-government-gets-ugly
<p>It's not unusual for the federal government to provoke widespread retching among its citizens, but it rarely does so intentionally. The new warning labels required on cigarette packs, however, have that goal. Designed to evoke disgust with smoking, they may also induce revulsion at excessive uses of power.</p>
<p>The old cigarette warnings inform consumers of straightforward facts, such as: "Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy," and "Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health." Thanks in part to such labels, Americans today fully grasp that smoking is unsafe.</p>
<p>But the point of the new labels is not to ensure that potential and actual smokers understand the hazards of the habit and make an informed choice. The point is to get people to avoid cigarettes whether they want to or not.</p>
<p>The Food and Drug Administration finds it intolerable that despite all the efforts to stamp out smoking&mdash;through tobacco taxes, advertising restrictions, educational campaigns, and smoking bans&mdash;nearly 50 million Americans continue to puff away. The hope is that repeated assaults with nauseating photos will kill the urge.</p>
<p>So anyone electing to smoke will have to run a gauntlet of horrors: a corpse, a diseased lung, rotting gums, and a smoker exhaling through a tracheotomy hole.</p>
<p>All this is made possible thanks to legislation passed in 2009 and signed by President Barack Obama. If it sounds like the sort of bossy, intrusive, big-government approach championed by Democrats, it is. But it passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses, with most Senate Republicans in support.</p>
<p>Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius imagines that the FDA is filling an unfortunate information gap. With these labels, she says, "every person who picks up a pack of cigarettes is going to know exactly what risk they're taking."</p>
<p>By "every person," she means every person who's been trapped at the bottom of a well for the past 50 years. Everyone else already knew. Cigarette companies have had to provide health warnings since the 1960s. The current labels allow no fond illusions about the fate awaiting tobacco addicts.</p>
<p>Sebelius apparently thinks the health information has been widely overlooked. Not to worry. Vanderbilt University law professor W. Kip Viscusi has found that smokers greatly <em>overestimate</em> the risk of dying from ailments caused by tobacco. If the government wanted to make sure that Americans were accurately informed, it would have to tell them smoking is considerably less dangerous than they assume.</p>
<p>Our leaders think that since stark facts haven't done enough to deter tobacco use, scary images are in order. The FDA predicts that by 2013, the new warnings will diminish the total number of smokers in the United States by 213,000.</p>
<p>Contain your excitement. The agency admits that the overall effect is "highly uncertain" and that its estimate could be way off. Even if its forecast comes true, the change would cut the prevalence of smoking by less than one-half of 1 percent.</p>
<p>As it happens, there is not much reason to expect even this microscopic reduction to materialize. Last year, researchers commissioned by the FDA exposed adults and teens to such images to assess the likely impact. Despite the emotional punch of the pictures, they didn't seem to induce adults to stop smoking or deter teens from starting.</p>
<p>Based on the experience of other countries that have tried hideous photos, including Canada, Britain, and Australia, Viscusi sees no grounds for optimism. "Smoking rates decline after the warnings but at the same rate as they did before the advent of warnings," he told me. "The key for judging whether there is likely to be an effect is whether the warnings shifted the trend in smoking rates in these other countries, and they did not."</p>
<p>Why not? Maybe because people already knew the risks. Maybe because most smokers enjoy tobacco enough not to care. Maybe because people soon learn to ignore the nasty pictures the way they tune out other warning messages.</p>
<p>The likely ineffectuality of this mandate does not discourage anti-tobacco crusaders. Its basic character, however, should spur everyone else to ask what business the federal government has interfering with a transaction between legal sellers and informed buyers who are minding their own business.</p>
<p>The new labels thrust the government further into gratuitous regulation of personal behavior, motivated less by medical concerns than moralism. Now, that's ugly.</p>
<p><strong>COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM</strong></p>1011846@http://www.reason.orgMon, 27 Jun 2011 07:00:00 EDTschapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman)Obama's War on Funhttp://www.reason.org/news/show/obamas-war-on-fun
<p><em>Editor's Note: This column is reprinted with permission of the Washington Examiner. <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/05/president-obamas-war-fun"> Click here</a> to read it at that site.</em></p>
<p>It's a high-pressure job, the presidency. Think about how badly the bin Laden raid could have gone. The worst case scenario&mdash;Navy SEALs trapped in a firefight with Pakistani forces&mdash;could have made <em>Black Hawk Down</em> look like a cakewalk.</p>
<p>Yet the night after he gave the "go" order, President Obama hit the White House Correspondents' Dinner and had to grin his way through canned laugh lines working over "the Donald."</p>
<p>Stressful! You couldn't blame the guy if he wanted to take the edge off with a smoke. Alas, he quit a year ago. It was "a personal challenge for him," the first lady explained recently, and she never "poked and prodded."</p>
<p>Of course not. It's obnoxious to hector your loved ones. "Poking and prodding" is what good government does to perfect strangers. And that's what the Obama administration has been doing, with unusual zeal, for the past 2 1/2 years.</p>
<p>You're not a real president until you fight a metaphorical "war" on a social problem. So, to LBJ's "War on Poverty" and Reagan's "War on Drugs," add Obama's "War on Fun." Like the "War on Terror," it's being fought on many fronts:</p>
<p>Smoking: Last fall, the killjoy crusaders at Obama's Food and Drug Administration released proposed "graphic warning labels" on cigarettes, including "one showing a toe tag on a corpse" and another where "a mother blows smoke on her baby." In December, a federal court rebuffed the administration's plan to squelch "e-cigarettes," which allow smokers to ingest nicotine vapor without carcinogens or secondhand smoke. But the president's lifestyle cops stand ready to regulate menthols, because, like clove cigarettes (banned in 2009), they taste good, so people might like them.</p>
<p>Alcohol: Similar logic drove the FDA's November ban on caffeinated malt liquors. Capitalizing on a minor moral panic over "Four Loko," which packs less punch than the ever-popular Red Bull and vodka, the agency threatened four companies with "seizure of the products" on the dubious grounds that caffeine becomes an "unsafe food additive" when combined with alcohol.</p>
<p>Poker: Last month, the Department of Justice shut down five major online poker sites, seizing their domain names, issuing arrest warrants for executives and seeking billions of dollars in asset forfeiture. One defendant faces jail time of up to 65 years for helping people play cards over the Internet.</p>
<p>Food: A year ago, Obama's FDA announced its plan to "adjust the American palate to a less salty diet," ratcheting down the amount of sodium allowed in processed foods. It's "a 10-year program," an agency source said, designed to change "embedded tastes in a whole generation of people." But even "real food" aficionados who shun Cheetos aren't safe from the reformers' zeal. On April 20, FDA agents and federal marshals carried out a 5 a.m. raid on an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, the culmination of a yearlong sting operation aimed at wiping out the scourge of unpasteurized milk. "It is the FDA's position that raw milk should never be consumed," an agency spokeswoman insisted.</p>
<p>C.S. Lewis once wrote that "of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Rulers who just want to exploit us may relax once their greed's sated.</p>
<p>But "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience," Lewis said.</p>
<p>On the whole, I prefer House Speaker John Boehner's attitude. When Fox News' Chris Wallace asked the Ohio Republican, "Why don't you stop smoking?" Boehner replied, "It's a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone."</p>
<p><em>Gene Healy is a vice president at the <a href="http://www.cato.org/">Cato Institute</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;author of&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1933995157/reasonmagazineA/">The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power</a><em>&nbsp;(Cato 2008). He is a columnist at the</em> <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/">Washington Examiner</a><em>, where this article originally appeared. <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/05/president-obamas-war-fun"> Click here</a> to read it at that site. This column <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/17/obamas-war-on-fun">previously appeared</a> at Reason.com.<br /></em></p>1011672@http://www.reason.orgTue, 17 May 2011 13:30:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (Gene Healy)Louisiana HB 63 Goes Up In Smokehttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/louisiana-hb-63-goes-up-in-smoke
<p>Earlier today Louisiana <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/53927495/HB-63-HB63-Current-Louisiana-Legislature-via-MyGov365-com" target="_parent">HB 63</a> went up in smoke after it failed to pass out of the states House Ways and Means Committee. The wide-ranging tax increase bill essentially sought to increase taxes on all tobacco products by at least 50% by:</p>
<ul>
<li>Repealing the sunset on a portion of the tax on cigarettes thereby making that portion of the tax on cigarettes permanent;</li>
<li>Increasing the tax on cigars invoiced by the manufacturer at $120 per thousand or less from 8% up to 12% of the invoice price, and increase the tax for cigars invoiced by the manufacturer at more than $120 per thousand from 20% up to 30% of the invoice price;</li>
<li>Increasing the tax on smoking tobacco (cigarettes) from 33% up to 49.5% of the invoice price; and</li>
<li>Increasing the tax on smokeless tobacco from 20% up to 30% of the invoice price.</li>
</ul>
<p>According to <em>The Times-Picayune</em>,<a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/tobacco_tax_increase_effective.html" target="_parent"> HB 63 received strong criticism</a> from a coalition of tea party groups, businesses and Governor Jindal himself. Rina Thomas, a Jindal aide, told the Committee earlier today that cigarette tax increases would be contrary to the work (policymakers have) done over the last three years (to cut taxes.) The bills sponsor (Rep. Ritchie) voluntarily deferred the bill after realizing he had <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/05/tobacco_tax_increase_effective.html" target="_parent">nowhere near</a> the seventy requisite votes to override Gov. Jindals veto.</p>
<p>Separately Rep. Ritchie sponsored <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/53926606/HB-591-HB591-Current-Louisiana-Legislature-via-MyGov365-com" target="_parent">HB 591</a>, which would exclusively repeal the sunset clause for the temporary four-cent levy on cigarettes set to expire January 30, 2012, and passed out of the House Ways and Means Committee on a 10-5 vote. Gov. Jindal also opposes HB 591, arguing <a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/04/gov_bobby_jindal_supports_cut.html" target="_parent">intervention by the legislature to repeal the sunset clause constitutes a tax increase</a>.</p>
<p>Tobacco taxes are a convenient target. In fact they are often considered low hanging fruit because politicians increase taxes under the false pretense of good intentions. However increasing tobacco taxes wont solve Louisianas budget deficit.</p>
<p>Gov. Jindal has the right idea here, and is pursuing effective governance over political convenience in addressing Louisianas $1.6 billion budget deficit. Gov. Jindal was recognized in Reason Foundations <em><a href="http://reason.org/files/state_annual_privatization_report_2010.pdf" target="_parent">Annual Privatization Report 2010: State Government Privatization</a></em> for being a national leader on innovative policy solutions. Below are some government reform highlights from Louisiana (including several proposed by the states <a href="http://senate.legis.state.la.us/streamline/" target="_parent">Commission on Streamlining Government</a>):</p>
<ul>
<li>In March 2010, the Louisiana Department Of Administration (LDOA) announced the privatization of property and casualty claims management and loss prevention services, a move expected to result in estimated savings of at least $20 million over five years;</li>
<li>LDOA is engaged in a three-year program to reduce the state vehicle fleet by 10% per year over the next three years, expanding existing rental car contracts and divesting portions of its vehicle fleet; and</li>
<li>The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) is implementing privatization initiatives in developmental disabilities, mental health and substance abuse treatment projected to cut costs by over $50 million in 2010.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Pelican States government downsizing efforts have prompted all three major credit rating agencies to upgrade Louisianas bond rating since 2009at a time when other states have seen downgrades given their shaky fiscal healthand the agencies specifically cited the states focus on spending control and streamlining as influencing factors. A higher credit rating alone will save Louisiana taxpayers millions in avoided interest costs over time.</p>
<p>Rather than raise taxes, Louisiana policymakers should continue to focus on implementing recommendations from the states <a href="http://senate.legis.state.la.us/streamline/" target="_parent">Commission on Streamlining Government</a>. For more ideas, see the American Legislative Exchange Councils <em><a href="http://reason.org/files/state_budget_reform_toolkit.pdf" target="_parent">State Budget Reform Toolkit</a></em>, which contains a broad range of creative policy solutions.</p>
1011657@http://www.reason.orgMon, 16 May 2011 19:00:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (Harris Kenny)Taxes Inducing Black Market Trade for Cigaretteshttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/taxes-black-market-cigarettes
<p>Reason Foundation has long argued that &ldquo;sin&rdquo; taxes on cigarettes are <a href="http://reason.org/blog/show/cigarette-taxes-jump-the-shark" target="_parent">ineffective</a> and <a href="http://reason.org/blog/show/1011398.html" target="_parent">regressive</a>; however the latest data shows they are dangerous too. Tax increases at the state level are inducing sharp increases in black market trade for cigarettes,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-05-02-atf-cigarette-smuggling.htm" target="_parent"><em>USA Today</em> reports</a>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; ">A recent wave of state tobacco tax increases, designed to pump revenue into cash-strapped local governments, is inspiring an increasingly dangerous cigarette smuggling industry where big profits lure violent criminal gangs and drug traffickers into the booming illegal market, according to law enforcement officials and court records.</p>
<p>Larrey Penninger, acting director of the tobacco diversion unit of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tells <em>USA Today</em>:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; ">Everyone out there (involved in trafficking operations) is tapping into tobacco&hellip;</p>
<ul>
<li>Last year, ATF reported 357 open cases involving tobacco smuggling, compared with a handful a decade earlier.</li>
<li>During FY 2010, the Justice Department reported 71 new prosecutions referred by (ATF), a 39 percent increase from the year before, according to records compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York.</li>
<li>Seizures of cash and property also have been rising, from $11 million in FY 2007 to $31.5 million in FY 2009.</li>
</ul>
<p>ATF&rsquo;s federal data is noteworthy, however state-level data published in <em><a href="http://www.mackinac.org/archives/2011/2010-09TobaccoSmugglingFINALweb.pdf" target="_parent">Cigarette Taxes and Smuggling 2010</a>&nbsp;</em>is even more revealing. <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/10041" target="_parent">Mackinac Center research</a> shows that cigarette smuggling is becoming increasinly common:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; ">The five smuggling destination states with the highest cigarette smuggling rates were Arizona (51.8 percent of the state&rsquo;s total consumption); New York (47.5 percent); Rhode Island (40.5 percent); New Mexico (37.2 percent); and California (36.3 percent).</p>
<p>With smuggling rates on the rise, the logical question to ask is, &ldquo;who are the smugglers?&rdquo; Besides drug dealers, gangs and thrifty (albeit law breaking) individuals, Mackinac Center research finds that <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/10041" target="_parent">higher cigarette taxes</a> induced operatives of the terrorist organization &ldquo;Party of God&rdquo;&mdash;commonly known as <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/10041#_ftn99" target="_parent">Hezbollah</a>&mdash;into black market trade for cigarettes. Hezbollah operatives made <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/10041#_ftnref111" target="_parent">hundreds of thousands of dollars</a> purchasing vanloads of cigarettes in North Carolina and smuggling them into Michigan where the difference in price was 75 cents per pack higher. According to the <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/10041#_ftn102" target="_parent">Federal Bureau of Investigation</a> (FBI), profits from black market trade for cigarettes were sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon in the form of cash and equipment ranging from night-vision goggles to laser range finders. This demonstrates how black market trade rewards individuals with dubious motivations who are willing to flagrantly break the law to make money.</p>
<p>Trends in federal and state smuggling data show that it&rsquo;s time to revisit state taxes on cigarettes. Taxes are inducing black market trade for cigarettes, which creates a more dangerous environment for consumers, diminishes the ability of legitimate businesses to operate and undermines the rule of law. If nothing else, state policymakers should think twice before raising taxes on cigarettes (again) to solve their budget woes.</p>
<p>For more on cigarette sin taxes, see my colleague David Godow&rsquo;s work <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/no-new-taxes-in-idaho-except-on-cig" target="_parent">here</a>, <a href="http://reason.org/blog/show/states-are-finally-turning-their-ba" target="_parent">here</a> and <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/leaving-taxes-or-candy-on-the-table" target="_parent">here</a>.</p>1011546@http://www.reason.orgTue, 19 Apr 2011 14:10:00 EDTinfo@reason.org (Harris Kenny)Wait, Smoking Is Dangerous?http://www.reason.org/news/show/wait-smoking-is-dangerous
<p><img src="http://reason.com/assets/mc/dpowell/2011_01/artifact.jpg" border="0" width="550" style="border: 0px initial initial;" height="414" /></p>
<p>In November the Food and Drug Administration proposed new, bigger, colorized, and illustrated cigarette warning labels. The theory behind the labels, required by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is that people already know that smoking is bad for them but need to be reminded good and hard.</p>
<p>Some of the images, such as the pictures that show smokers breathing into the faces of babies and old ladies, have an air of unreality that undermines the intent. The illustrations suggesting what you can do when you quit smoking&mdash;blow bubbles, wear a T-shirt bragging about your feat, clog your toilet with cigarettes&mdash;can be charitably described as uninspired. But the icky lungs, the autopsied corpse, the dying cancer patient, and the guy smoking through the hole in his neck get points for grabbing attention.</p>
<p>That does not mean the new warnings will have a noticeable impact. Smoking rates have been declining since the 1960s, and in 2009 the share of Americans who were daily smokers fell to a record low of 12.7 percent. In the face of punitive taxes, increasingly broad smoking bans, and other factors that make the habit expensive, inconvenient, and unfashionable, it will be impossible to isolate the impact of more-conspicuous hectoring on cigarette packages.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em style="font-style: italic;"><a href="mailto:jsullum&#64;reason.com">Jacob Sullum</a>&nbsp;is a senior editor at</em>&nbsp;<strong style="font-weight: bold;">reason. </strong><em>This column <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/18/wait-smoking-is-dangerous">first appeared</a> at Reason.com.</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>1011257@http://www.reason.orgFri, 18 Feb 2011 13:00:00 ESTjsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum)Nudgers vs. Nannieshttp://www.reason.org/news/show/nudgers-vs-nannies
<p>There&rsquo;s a new divide amongst Britain&rsquo;s political classes, an explosive war of words over the future of our nation. It&rsquo;s not the left-right divide come back from the dead, nor is it an old-fashioned prince-pauper split or a return of the roundhead-cavalier clash that so dramatically transformed Britain in the 17th century.</p>
<p>No, the divide today is between nudgers and nannies. Between those who believe the fat, feckless masses should be nudged towards better, healthier behavior and those who believe the fat and feckless should be nannied towards better, healthier behavior.</p>
<p>Yes, the nation that gave you a civil war between parliamentarians and a king, which staged a major stand-off between the elected Commons and the unelected Lords in the early 1900s, which had the world gripped with its war between the helmet-haired Iron Lady and angry striking miners in the 1980s, now offers you the sad spectacle of politicos divided on the question of how best to hector the populace. How low British politics has sunk.</p>
<p>Our prime minister David Cameron leads the nudgers. He has a distinctly Orwellian-sounding <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge-unit-economic-behaviour"> Behavioural Insight Team</a> inside Downing Street, which furnishes him with ideas for how to nudge the <a href="http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/images/files/MINDSPACE-practical-guide.pdf"> &ldquo;illogical&rdquo;</a> masses (its word) towards the kind of lifestyle approved by Cameron&rsquo;s government: non-smoking, alcohol-free, slim, safe, and no fun.</p>
<p>Public health officials and their cheerleaders in the media lead the nannies. They believe Cameron&rsquo;s obsession with nudging, with using subtle signals and mind manipulation rather than legislation to try to wean people off junk food, cigarettes, and so on, leads only to neglect. Without actual legislation forcing people to become more health-conscious, there will be &ldquo;a surge in obesity and mass poisoning [through the consumption of booze and junk food]&rdquo;, says <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/nudge-health-policy-david-cameron"> one of the media supporters of the nannies</a>.</p>
<p>Cameron&rsquo;s nudgers are, of course, leading the field in this uncivil war over how to remould people&rsquo;s minds and bodies. Having taken Downing Street in this year&rsquo;s general election, the nudgers promise to override the previous 13 years of New Labour nannying, which including smoking bans, legal restrictions on junk-food advertising, anti-booze measures, and relentless and patronizing public-health advice. And they plan to override it, not with liberty, or with a renewed respect for individual moral autonomy, but with a political creed that is if anything even more insidious and allergic to the idea of individual responsibility than nannying ever was: nudging.</p>
<p>Inspired by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein&rsquo;s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1294153491&amp;sr=1-1"> Nudge: Improving Decisions About Wealth, Health and Happiness</a></em>&mdash;that blasted book!&mdash;Cameron set up a Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) when he arrived at Downing Street in May. With Thaler and various psychologists as advisers, the BIT brain cops aim to use social psychology and behavioral economics to hypnotize people into adopting approved forms of behavior.</p>
<p>According to BIT propaganda, the nudgers plan to do away with the old-style Blair-and-Brown bossiness <a href="http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/images/files/MINDSPACE-practical-guide.pdf"> in favor of</a> offering incentives, using subliminal messaging, and changing the &ldquo;choice architecture&rdquo; of our daily lives, in order to influence us, sometimes sub-consciously, towards what they call &ldquo;healthier decisions and healthier lives.&rdquo; So, for example, instead of using taxes to make driving of cars more expensive, as New Labour did, the nudgers will focus on rebuilding public spaces in such a way that choosing to walk or ride a bicycle becomes easier than it currently is. In short, they&rsquo;ll physically re-engineer public space with an eye for socially engineering those who inhabit it.</p>
<p>Some of BIT&rsquo;s propaganda is gobsmackingly Orwellian. Even the name&mdash;Behavioural Insight Team&mdash;sounds like something Big Brother might have devised to keep Winston and Julia and the rest in order and in shape. BIT is built on the idea that the mass of the population lacks both the intellect and the free will to become better persons, and thus they must be secretly signposted towards approved behavior. A <a href="http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/images/files/MINDSPACE-practical-guide.pdf"> Cabinet Office paper</a> explaining the importance of developing nudge policies argues that &ldquo;people are sometimes seemingly irrational&rdquo; and therefore the state should &ldquo;influence behaviour through public policy.&rdquo; And because many of our behavior-related choices are made &ldquo;outside of conscious awareness,&rdquo; there is no point trying to convince us through public information to change our behavior&mdash;no, we must simply have our grey matter toyed with by those who know best. &ldquo;Providing information per se often has surprisingly modest and sometimes unintended impacts&rdquo;, says the Cabinet Office paper, and therefore government should &ldquo;shift the focus of attention away from facts and information and towards altering the context in which people act.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In short: never mind reasoning with people, just use pressure instead. Forget about debate and discussion, just deploy underhand nudging techniques. This is not only profoundly illiberal, it is profoundly undemocratic, as the nudgers explicitly circumvent the realm of information and law in their relentless campaign to reshape our apparently problematic consciousnesses.</p>
<p>Most strikingly of all, the Cabinet Office paper informs us that the government ultimately aims to be a <a href="http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/images/files/MINDSPACE-practical-guide.pdf"> &ldquo;surrogate willpower&rdquo;</a> for the public. Because we the people are so fickle, so clueless, so fundamentally unconscious in the way we poison ourselves with cigarettes and hamburgers, the government must <em>become</em> our will. It&rsquo;s straight out of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four-George-Orwell/dp/0452284236/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1294153639&amp;sr=1-3"> <em>Nineteen Eighty-Four</em></a>, bringing to mind O&rsquo;Brien, the jailor who tortures Winston and who says: &ldquo;We create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.&rdquo; Likewise, Britain&rsquo;s ruling nudgers look upon the public as putty, as an easily reshaped blob.</p>
<p>Fortunately, a war of words has been launched against the nudgers. Unfortunately, it&rsquo;s been launched by the ousted nannies, who only want to recover their old power to legislate against so-called bad behavior.</p>
<p>In the run-up to Christmas, that apparently wicked and destructive period of overeating and too much booze consumption, the nannies have come out of the woodwork to accuse Cameron&rsquo;s government of failing to force through an immediate campaign to correct people&rsquo;s behavior.</p>
<p>Under the headline &ldquo;Nudge or Fudge?&rdquo;, the <em>Independent</em> <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nudge-or-fudge-public-health-fears-as-lansley-retreats-from-regulation-2151049.html"> tells us</a> that more and more public-health officials, influential doctors, and the like, are concerned that &ldquo;tougher regulation of junk food, smoking and cheap alcohol [has been] cast aside by a government that prefers to &lsquo;encourage&rsquo; public health.&rdquo; Apparently such &ldquo;encouragement&rdquo; (which looks more like attempted mind-manipulation to me) is not enough; people must instead be forced to change their habits through bans and the threat of legal sanction.</p>
<p>So a spokeswoman for the British Medical Association says &ldquo;what we need to see is more action on pricing, taxation and advertising.&rdquo; That is, we should make bad things such as cigarettes and alcohol more expensive, to keep them out of the hands of the self-destructive poor, and we should curb or ban adverts for these bad things as well.</p>
<p>The nannies&rsquo; battle against the nudgers has encouraged some nanny-happy commentators&mdash;who are normally more guarded about their busybody instincts&mdash;to pipe up and demand tougher legislation to control the masses&rsquo; reckless lifestyles. A writer for the liberal Sunday broadsheet <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/05/nudge-health-policy-david-cameron"> <em>The Observer</em></a> says the idea that &ldquo;we can be gently pushed into self-improvement... smacks only of neglect.&rdquo; The real problem with nudging, she says, is &ldquo;its feebleness in dealing with the biggest threats to health.&rdquo;</p>
<p>What is alarming about this debate is the taken-for-granted idea that it is the role of the state to tell people what to do in their private lives: what to eat, what to drink, whether to smoke, how to travel from A to B, even how to fuck (always &ldquo;safely,&rdquo; of course.) It is a testament to the lack of libertarian instinct in modern British politics that no one is standing up to say that, actually, these issues are none of the state&rsquo;s business. Anyone who respects individual moral autonomy should reject both the nannies, who believe we exercise our autonomy in the wrong way, and the nudgers, who believe we are fundamentally incapable of exercising autonomy and thus the state should do it on our behalf. We need a third army in this unsightly war, one that chucks some serious intellectual hand grenades right into the middle of this clash between nudgers and nannies.</p>
<p><em>Brendan O&rsquo;Neill is editor of <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/">spiked</a> in London. This column <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/04/nudgers-vs-nannies">first appeared</a> at Reason.com.<br /></em></p>1011018@http://www.reason.orgTue, 04 Jan 2011 12:00:00 ESTinfo@reason.org (Brendan O'Neill)Once Again, Raising Taxes Reduces Revenuehttp://www.reason.org/blog/show/raising-taxes-reduces-revenue
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Cigarette sales in California plunged to their lowest level in a decade last year as smokers were squeezed by new taxes and restrictions on where they could light up.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>. . .<br /><br />[T]he decline in smoking also means $74 million in tax revenues have disappeared like a puff of smoke, leaving health programs that rely on cigarette taxes to look for other ways to pay for services.</em></p>
<p>Who'd have thought that could happen.&nbsp; Oh, that's right, <strong><em>WE</em></strong> would. Back in <a href="http://reason.org/news/show/a-bad-idea-gone-too-far">2006 a Reason analysis</a> of proposed higher tobacco taxes said:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Tobacco tax revenues will initially cover the costs of new programs and expansion of health care benefits, but as tobacco sales continue to decline, programs founded on California&rsquo;s tobacco consumers will be left stranded with budgetary needs far above the dedicated revenue stream.</em></p>
<p>Well, waddya know.</p>1010292@http://www.reason.orgWed, 28 Jul 2010 09:46:00 EDTadrian.moore@reason.org (Adrian Moore)Gin, Girls, and Governancehttp://www.reason.org/news/show/gin-girls-governance
<p>In February, President Barack Obama told a New Hampshire audience, &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you&rsquo;re trying to save for college.&rdquo; Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was still livid when the president came to town shortly afterward, and Goodman made headlines by refusing to meet with Obama during his visit. Goodman, a former mob attorney, is also famous for telling a fourth-grader that if he were stranded on a deserted island, the one thing he&rsquo;d bring with him is a bottle of gin, later amended to a bottle of gin and two showgirls.</p>
<p>Originally elected as a Democrat in 1999, Goodman now has no party affiliation. Senior Editor Radley Balko interviewed the mayor in February, days before Goodman dissed the commander in chief.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> What shaped your political philosophy?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> I&rsquo;m a criminal defense lawyer by profession, so I have an inherent distrust for government. I rarely put a client on the witness stand. I usually made my case by showing the government didn&rsquo;t behave properly, either under the Constitution or by its methodology. That&rsquo;s a pretty successful way to practice criminal law.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Is personal freedom today more threatened by the moral crusaders on the right or the public health crusaders on the left?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> Both. I think they both have a tendency to want government to address personal behavior. I&rsquo;m not in favor of that. I don&rsquo;t like smoking bans. If people want to kill themselves slowly, that&rsquo;s their prerogative. There needs to be a national discussion about the legalization of drugs and about the legalization of prostitution. I&rsquo;m sometimes mischaracterized as supporting those positions, and I certainly understand that some people may not be ready for these sorts of changes. But I think we certainly need to have the discussion, about both the benefits and possible detriments of legalization.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Critics of the U.S. Supreme Court decision lifting campaign restrictions on corporations have mused that it could open the door to NASCAR-style corporate sponsorship of politicians. You actually <em>have</em> a corporate sponsor. How did that happen?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> A friend who worked for the liquor industry knew I was a big Beefeater drinker and asked if I&rsquo;d like to be an official sponsor. I said I&rsquo;d be open to it. They offered $25,000. I said, &ldquo;Nope. Not enough.&rdquo; So another friend who owns a wine and spirits company asked if I&rsquo;d like to be a spokesman for Bombay Sapphire instead. I guess we&rsquo;re getting into the area of prostitution here, but I thought if I could get enough money, I&rsquo;d start drinking Bombay.</p>
<p>So I tried Bombay. It tasted very, very good. They offered $100,000, and I accepted. So $50,000 goes to homeless issues here in the Las Vegas community, and $50,000 goes for scholarships for needy children to a private school my wife founded. Since then, I&rsquo;ve received another $50,000, and that went to a brain institute here.</p>
<p>I think I&rsquo;ve used the money wisely. I use the product to excess. About a bottle a night.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> A couple years ago, you lashed out at a video game that depicted terror attacks on Las Vegas, implying it should be taken off the shelves. How does that jibe with your philosophy of personal and economic freedom?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> The game put us in a very bad light. I&rsquo;m a big defender of free speech, but I also have a job to do as mayor. Just like when the president says something bad about Las Vegas, I blast him. The fella who made that game had every right to make it, and I had every right to criticize him for it.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Prior to politics, you represented accused organized crime figures. What&rsquo;s the biggest difference between politics and the mob?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> My clients gave me their word, and their word was their bond. They always paid me. They always thanked me at the end of the day. In the political world, none of that happens. A politician&rsquo;s word usually doesn&rsquo;t mean a damn. His word is for the moment.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/10/gin-girls-and-governance">This column first appeared at Reason.com</a>.</em></p>1009944@http://www.reason.orgMon, 10 May 2010 13:26:00 EDTrbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko)